Coe Review

Coe Review
Volume 34
Coe Review 2004 masthead

EDITOR Nick Barnes MANAGING EDITOR Corey Davis FICTION EDITOR Jen Streck POETRY EDITOR Aliza Fones MANUSCRIPT READERS Dan Anderson Allison Carr Stefanie Carter Jordan Cave Kimary Cone Tanner Curl Katie Fuller Renee Hoffman Carla Horsley David Johnson William Kabel Melissa Kalensky Andy Keiser Liz Nicklos Brian Nigg Alice Obrecht Andrea Olson Shannon Osborn Adam Owen Sean Pearl Lin Prisbey Kim Schnurr Becky Stockel Kim Walsh FACULTY ADVISOR Charles Aukema
Correspondence and subscriptions should be addressed to Coe Review; Coe College; 1220 First Ave. NE; Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402. The editors invite submissions of fiction and poetry, which must be received between September 1 and March 1; manuscripts received between March 2 and August 31 will not be read. No manuscripts will be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All manuscripts become property of the Coe Review, unless otherwise indicated. Copyright 2004 by Coe Review. No part of this volume may be reproduced in any manner without written permission. The views expressed in this magazine are to be attributed to the writers, not the editors or sponsors. Printed in the United States of America.
Table of Contents
S. K. Sedlacek
1971 1 2 6 7 36 37 38 55 56 57 59 63 65 68 109 111 112 113
Alan Britt
Summer Night Spanish Wine in Early Summer
K. Kvashay-Boyle
King Kong
Glenn Sheldon
Midwest Weather
John Azrak
blue on blue
Joe Mills
The Banks of the Sava curse of the cretaceous an elegy
Virginia Chase Sutton

The Miracle of My Fathers Cock What Brings You to Del Amo Hospital? Doors Sex
Michael Amundson
Phermone Cocktails and a Kangaroo Pugilist
Judi A. Rypma
Gluttony
Donna Pucciani
Leonid Meteor Shower November 19, 2002
Emily Renaud
Photograph:
Alice Obrecht
Simulacra Silhouettes
William Jolliff
Night Flight Over Water If I Could Dream Like William Butler Yeats 121 122 123 142 143 144 174 175 176 177 192 193 194 195 178 201 202
ZZ Packer
Geese
Carl Auerbach
The Last Neanderthal
Sharon Doyle
They're Spun from Transparent Silk--
Becky Stockel
driving towards nothing
Mitchell Metz
Avatar
Nathan Nass
13 Days in a Rice Chest Nocturnes on Cassette
Liz Nicklos
Good Girl
Arthur Gottlieb
Conversion Duelists
Pippa Coulter Abston

Res Ipsa Loquitur
Kyle Fargen
The Pocket Rocket Man
Stef Carter
found (in chuck aukema's class)
David Thornbrugh
The Patience of a Dog
TC Boyle
Me Cago En La Leche (Robert Jordan in Nicaragua)
Noel Conneely
Beggars Galway Sligo Bus 213 214 215 223 224
Nick Barnes
Manolo
Dale Haake
The Crocus
Contributor Notes
cover digital graphic by Erin Cahill
The complete texts of all 34 volumes of Coe Review are online at http://japicx.coe.edu/coereview/
1971 S. K. Sedlacek
1971
S. K. Sedlacek
her eyes, empty like knotholes in the fence, gaze backwards into a tossed bouquet of tie-died mantras as sandalwood scents the air with the deep purple sound of a sweet child in time as naked toddlers plop brown-berry bottoms on the oceans sand with plump fingers splayed and knead frothy grit into seaside castles while bare-breasted mothers suckle egalitarian notions and weave flowers in their hair.
Summer Night Alan Britt
Summer Night
Alan Britt
1. Summer exhales fireflies.
The half-moon drifts in a charcoal sea. Bite marks on the moon's torso are testimonials for each time she bobbed below the surface like a saint without feet. At 9:34 PM a neighbor sweeps his porch with a short stubby broom. The moon sinks behind a cloud. Fireflies are lost. The street lamp raises a fist of ice when a dead moon rolls by in the empty bed of a pick-up truck. 2. Air conditioners surround the garden, where the cabbages are fast asleep and the beets receive in-laws
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Summer Night Alan Britt
from the grave. One block away a single locust emerges. 3. The moon is a ground hog living beneath our white shed. She dines on white egg shells, Antiguan coffee grounds. Suddenly the creepers with their long-legged chatter call back and forth across yellow hedges, across the traffic and air-conditioners, across the impossible bones, across railroad tracks and political myths, across the illuminated bodies of Native Americans, Afro-Americans, Asian-Americans, and, of course, those blasted Irish with their interminable shame and beautiful persistence, also, Greek-Americans and French roots clanging below the green hurricanes of Baton Rouge whose swamps and ancient alligators include witches inside the straw-colored bellies of those dreaming reptiles!
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Summer Night Alan Britt 4. The cab driver is really nervous when he pulls into the yard.
It seems the moon has given birth to a clutch sprawled all over his backseat. The cab driver is summoned on his radio. He begins drinking white wine and dipping shrimp into the humidity of this summer night. 5. Unfortunately, the paperwork required for the recent wave of deaths is overwhelming and I am unable to assist the cab driver in any fashion. More neighbors arrive; they are not the moon's undertakers so they pretend not to notice the cab driver drunk from exhaust or even his cab illuminated by its clutch of infant moons. Such is the strange behavior of neighbors.
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Summer Night Alan Britt 6. In any event a car door closes like a clam shell, cicadas roar through the forests of the night and a giant spruce whose head rises above the sky's ashes is looking for her husband last seen strolling through darkness with the half-moon.
Spanish Wine in Early Summer Alan Britt
Spanish Wine in Early Summer

Alan Britt
This Spanish wine has all the dryness of rattlesnake skin abandoned between the forked thoughts of an Arizona moon. Moon tinged with bruises on one side. If this wine truly is a snake then it has silk scales and the warmth of a deep kiss pressed by a complete stranger against the lips of last night's dream. This wine wears a loose fitting robe while she writes of loneliness on pages made from parchment and pearls in her adolescent diary.
King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle
King Kong
K. Kvashay-Boyle
ere there is a lurid lushness in the folds and leaves of foliage, unmistakably lurid, damp and primal and writhing with life, inviting and forgiving, yes, all of those things, and that is exactly why Craig likes it here shaded in the flourishing undergrowth, relaxing, thinking nothing, feeling virile and expansive and strong, and this scene would be absolutely perfect, all of it, perfect, except for one lovely thing. She steps on the twigs and they crack. She pulls on the fruit and it falls. She opens her mouth and out pops fact after fact. Craig reaches to smooth a bent Visalia frond, holds it in his hand, and as she talks he feels the velvety silk of leaf against skin. Well the fact is, even in this country, reproductive success is falsely cut short, you know? Like by these weird cultural rituals, right? She is excited. Grass pokes up from beneath her. She is holding Darwins Dreamscape in her hands, with a finger suggestively inserted between the lips of the book so the pages fold around the finger like water around a rock in a stream. By cultural rituals, Craig knows what she means. She means sexually exclusive pair bonds: one male to one female. She means the unnatural monogamous relationship, the myth of the passive female, the attempt to halt unbearable evolutionary urges to spread the seed and spread it far and wide. Yes, he knows just exactly what she means. She means marriage. She means science. Baby, baby, Craig makes his voice deep and he swings Elvis hips, drop the book and kiss me, please. Hes knows whats coming. Some outlandish statistic on the puny testicle size of gorillas. Some fun-filled fact on hermaphroditic slugs. To tell the truth Craig doesnt want science here with him on his plot of dirt. In the garden he squirts her feet with the hose. She smiles
and ignores him. With the water on the feet he means leave me alone. He means dont crack through this green with that voice of yours. And unless its science in a bikini today, unless today Leigh wants to toss that book of hers down in the dirt and start acting like the animalistic Darwinette she claims to be, well unless all thats finally and righteously true, today Craig wants to hear none of it. He already knows all about it, twice, three times, a hundred times over. No, but listen, Craig, seriously. Yeah yeah yeah, he laughs, I got it. I hear you. Reproductive success. So what elses new? They have the books on the shelf. He knows the drill. The revised theories on sexual selection. The studies on sperm competition, with footnotes and endnotes and asterisks for exceptions. The mountainous piles of papers that surround the slippers on her side of the bed, with their rigid tables and graphs and cross-referenced facts all announce some starling new thing, some outlandishly true exception to the rule every other uninformed sucker in town plays by. Or at least thinks he plays by. Sarah Hrdy, PhD. Patty Gowaty, PhD. Sexual Dialectics. Sexually antagonistic co-evolution. Concealed ovulation. Continuous receptivity. The thing of it is, a guy could go on in his life and he could just not know about all this stuff. He could be like the jokers in the delivery room who believe with all their hearts that women are made yielding, coy, and unfathomable. Unconcerned with the extrapair copulation. Naturally monogamous. Uninterested in range and variety. Which, Craig knows as well as the published researchers he and Leigh read about every month in Evolution Today, is entirely untrue. What Craig cant quite get is how this information works in real life. How it works, for instance, between himself and Leigh. Because as far as he can tell, it doesnt do much for them. This enlightenment. It doesnt seem much like Leigh has anything at all in common with the amorous apes and their constant swollen vulvas, their insatiable appetites,
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their manhandling of the males. And oh yes, it has to be seen to be believed but Craigs sat in on lectures and watched x-rated classroom slides. These Bonobo chimps? They do sex while manhandling. Oh they do it swinging, upside down, two to one, three to five, male to male, more and more, while eating, while shrieking, while their foremothers look on in encouragement, when they meet, when theyre upset, when its time for bed and when breakfast is brought out. Leigh, if you want to know the truth, does the dishes. Not always, but she does them. She sips tea in bed. She likes quiet movies and books aboutwell yes, books about these perverse animalistic mnage tens, but also she reads the books about Catherine and Heathcliff, the prim unconsummated yearnings between married types and their farmhands, the warm-your-heart weepers she sniffles over when Craig takes her to the beach. And what hes been thinking, lately, is that there must be some sort of angle, some way for all this to equal something more, well, something more wild than the very nice relations he and Leigh exchange in the bedroom. Bi-weekly. With much love and tender care. She steps unknowingly on a bud. She slaps quickly at a mosquito on her arm. Her feet are bare. The dirt is black. She stretches to hold a branch away from her face. Craig looks at the hopeful outstretched limbs of the sycamore, he looks at the oak. He splashes them both. Well, so what I was thinking is that listen, Craig, this is serious, and I mean, if you dont feelwell, I dont know. If you dont feel good about this then well just forget it, okay? Craig listens and he knows that there is a deep untapped potential in his body, a latent marbled vein of desire running through him. Okay, she says, if you wanted to, what we could do is we could take up a residency in Uganda, and we could apply for the Parish grant, you know, which I think I could get, and we could study the cyclical mating habits of the Red Fern Twit! Now did that sound like what Craig wanted to do?
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No. It did not.
The party that night is far from swank, youd have to be deaf and blind and half dead to call it swank and even then youd have to be a mild-mannered academic too. The lobbys as overlit as an operating room, presumably so that everyone can get a nice long look at the scuffed tweed lounge chairs and cheese platters, and on top of it all theres the location: they titter around directly across from Shariff Lecture Hall for godssakeyou know, just in case one of them gets suddenly stuck by an idea so profound she has to race over and give her speech in front of the pulpitand even this early on in the evening, even at this dismal an affair, Craig is party people and already drunk. He stands surveying the room, its dreary fake plants, its tattered Research Initiative banner, the proud pyramid of cheap plastic cups by the punch bowl, and hes spoken at superhuman length on the Great Tit with Professor Pricilla Richters camp of devoted bird watchers, hes altruistically offered his two cents on Cooperative Hunting with Elizabeth Relles, and guess what? Hes burned out, he is, he wants to get Leigh and leave here and go some place else where theres music and dancing and no heed paid to proper bibliographic citation. Hes burned out and by the time Tim Munro, one on an endless list of Leighs most treasured professors, ambles excitedly over to share his unique perspective on Bush Meat Consumption Among Indigenous Peoples, Craig feels just about ready to punch him in the throat. Well, Craig, what can I say? Bet you didnt think this old dog had it in him, but as Im sure youre well aware, the data is in, yes sir, Leighs told you, am I right? Stale breath, eyes askew, and by god, the stench of the cheese. Yup, all thats left now is configuration of statistics. And what a fine bunch of statistics they are, young man, really fascinating percentagesdont get me started on the implications here. While Professor Tim Munro, with his voice like a distant
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weedwhacker, buzzes on and on about pros and cons and percentages and industrialization, Craig absently watches Leigh work the room. And she works it like a pro. Craig watches Leigh lean over to whisper authoritatively in the ear of another scientist and then he watches the two of them burst into schoolgirl giggles. Craig sips at his vodka punch. The other scientist is very attractive. Dark flashing eyes, thick hair, all that, and soon enough Craigs mind is wandering; hes thinking about what they need from the grocery store, the nonfat milk, the pork chops, the pink daisy razor packs, teriyaki chicken legs, lean hamburger patties, breakfast links, bacon, ground beef, and as the items parade across his mind he can see the sexy painted fingers of the checkout girl, clutching each item briefly, then scanning and bagging and smiling at Craig and he can see it all as clearly as if hes replaying a movie. All the while, Tim Munro keeps right on talking without even pausing for breath and Craig keeps right on watching the women, Leigh, Elizabeth, and the rest of them, Shiva, Jodi, the wives and girlfriends, the tenured professors and the research assistants, all of them with their degrees and their field work and their video footage. The thing is, Craig thinks bitterly, in this room, amongst all these people with all this talk of bloody red meat and randy females and sexual aggression, in the end its still nothing but name-tags and hems below the knee. If someone could come up with a theorylike this bit about the wanderlust in the lusty female heart that all these articles go on and on aboutwell then why in the world wouldnt a woman like any of these women test out her own theory in practice? In the mens room? Right now? Leigh is ridiculously faithful but with these types its all about the theory. Its all about framework, the research. And suddenly, staring out at all of these prim women, a funny idea pops right into Craigs mind as if an apple out of the air hit him on the head. He stands very still, and lets the essence of the idea wash over him. No, he thinks, no, not in a million years. Unless, of
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course... well, but no. Craig looks out at the crowd of data-hungry women, socio-biologists, geneticists, evolutionary psychologists. But the thing is, he thinks, you never know. Maybe. Just maybe. Craig excuses himself, he stands for a while fingering the fake plastic shrubbery, gets another drink, and an hour later he approaches Leigh. You wouldnt believe, he says, what Tim Munro was telling me. Hmm? she says. Too much shoptalk? Never mind, no, its nothing. He looks nonchalantly away and waits for Leigh to lean in. Well, its just that, he stirs his drink with his finger, well, oh, I guess as a concept it doesnt have much bearing on real life, you know? Its too bizarre. Forget I mentioned it. Tim did you say? Tim Munro? Its nothing. Really. I dont mean to shake things up. Hows Elizabeth doing? Well, as far as I know, Craig, hes very thorough. Professor Munro? His reputation is solid fieldwork. Yeah, says Craig, Yeah, you wouldnt believe the things he was saying, though. The nerve of some of these science types, your own colleagues, sweetheart, its just so far-fetched. The delicate scowl as she looks up at Craig is priceless. He shakes his head. What he thinks women are after? Leigh, honey, if you ask me it just violates basic human nature. Oh please, youre really not being fair. Leigh leans in close enough for Craig to smell her shampoo and she glances over at Professor Munro, who is at that exact moment explaining something surely filthy to a group of grad students that involves his hands over his head, as if hes tipping a top hat. And please dont say human nature here unless youre joking because you know as well as anyone what a sham that is, I mean Craig, we have our customs but No, no, no: the question is do you want to be unfaithful?
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To stray? If I wanted to I would have. She looks back at Tim Munro. You see. Me neither. I was right all along. Yes, but Nope, case closed. This theory stuff just doesnt hold up. Okay, Leigh says to Craig, are you talking about No listen, says Craig and as he gets to the gem of it, he feels the excitement burn in his throat, what Im talking about is the little deal Mister Munro and his lovely wife have worked out, one which Im sure you, my dear, would have no interest in. He sips his drink. He tries to hold his face still. The thing to do, Craig knows, is plant the seed. And thats it. Just plant. And wait. As a matter of fact, he says, Im not even going to mention it. Frankly these types of advanced scientific principles are just a little perverse for my taste. I dont know why were even standing here having this conversation. Perverse, did you say? Leigh looks up in ready defense of any extremist attitude such an expert might hold. Because, of course, the radical text in her head is The Excess of the Amorous Ape or Optimal Mating Habits of the Matriarchies or whatever. All this, you see, despite her personal habits. All this despite the strict loyalty she advocates and practices, and Craig, at this point, wants to whoop out laughing, he wants to shout gotcha, he wants to reach out and slap Shiva across her ample backside, but he knows better than that, hes a smooth operator, and all that betrays him is the sparkle in his eye. Craig and Leigh go home later and watch television. On The Nature Show a peacock uses his elaborate tail feathers to entice a mate. Craig and Leigh make love. Craig thinks about the supermarket checkout clerk and the tiny furious breasts standing out proud and braless against her shirt. Leigh thinks about wal13
ruses defending their turf.
A small pile of weeds, crabgrass spikelets and kudzu seed twitch in the breeze. On hands and knees Craig yanks at the dirt. Divots of Miracle-Gro deep in the soil. Dig just a little. If it were someone else, okay, a different time in his life, well, the solution would be simple. Because come on, as great as Leigh is, five years with one brand is some kind of commitment. When the hollow is deep enough Craig takes the broken eggshells, carefully preserved from a week of breakfasts, and lets them crunch. He sets them in sparingly, with a generous layer of rich dirt between each new deposit. He burps every layer, patting gently at the soil. And yes, if the situation were different, a different girlfriend maybe, he could do it without regrets, he knows from experience. You see, something like that doesnt bother a guy like Craig. But Leigh, on the other hand, shes a woman of high moral standards. And he couldnt do a thing like that to her. Cheat. Lie. Sneak. No way. He moves to the tree, tugs up a dandelion shoot and out pops a whole clump of moist earth. Take the well-tred path and she might find out. Leighs a smart lady. He deepens out the hole. Sticks in seeds, Miracle-Gro, eggshells. Plus theyve always been so open and honest with each other, which is not something Craig would knowingly give up. But come on, a person needs a little variety in life, right? Its only natural. Take Traci: viable, approachable, and ripe with sensuality. Craig feels the wet soil crumble through his fingers and he pictures Traci guarding the food at the end of the conveyer belt with her cheerful nametag and her come-hither-stare. He relives last weeks breathy exchange, how she always remembers his name and how she stresses it over the abundance of bananas and cherries and boxed eggswhich by the way, she opens up to check, very thoughtful, thorough girland how her little square teeth shine when she laughs at his jokes.
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Do you need anything, honey? Craig says when he comes in with gloves in his hands and dirt on his knees. From the store? Okay, Leigh smiles and shakes her head in giddy disgust. Cheat on your lover? Craig sets down his magazine. Their bed is a topographical map, jutting hilltops and knees, the smooth spread of a relaxed thigh, and the lime cotton sheets running over all of Leigh like prairie grass. She displays an elaborate cover and points with exaggeration, as if its a cereal commercial, at a woman whose flowing hair cascades down the bulging hulk of her lover. Like you said before? Ask the questionand I dont just mean fantasyI mean really ask the question and guess what: youve got the answer. She goes back to the novel, she turns the page and lets out a gasp of mock scandal. Craig snuggles up next to her. Oh I know, he says, absolutely, I agree. But just think: what if the question werent even the issue? Right, sweetheart? Because isnt that what youre really saying? Hmm? Leigh answers without looking up. Well, I dont know. Sounds to me like youve been thinking about what Professor Munro and his wife do. Over the lip of the book she smiles at him. Did he really say all that? Howd he put it? I swear to god. Can you believe that? She stares down at her novel, and as Craig looks back to the magazine, from the corner of his eye he sees her shake her head, and Craig isnt exactly counting but its not two minutes later that she lays her book in her lap, spine up. Well, so what exactly did he say? Just like I said. Maximize their reproductive success. They have affairs. Well, no, god youre so harsh sometimes, baby, thats not how he put it at allhe said that they both knew and agreed. It
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was like a contract. Yeah, sure, but reproductive success, I mean what? Was he really about to raise some other guys kid? If she got pregnant? Well, I think as a couple they were more interested in, how did you put it, lack of restriction. As a concept. So that they could behave like in a way thats more in tune with, um, I think he said with what our bodies are designed for? Yeah. Well, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, he said you would. Oh, no way. Gross, Craig, you didnt say you guys were talking about me. She pauses to consider something, then scrunches her face and smiles in disbelief. But he did, though? He said me? Now, if Professor Munro were attractive at all, even just the tiniest bit, Craig knew, this bait wouldnt work. But as it was the great scientist, with his crooked nose and slumped lips, his bad breath, loose skin and slipped disk, was elderly, pudgy, and entirely repulsive. So Craig went right ahead. Said you were an astute observer of the primates honestly expressed sexuality. An honestly expressed sexuality. Her face takes on a kind of transfixed serenity when she discusses her research into evolutionary theory and thats just the way her face looks now, as she repeats the words. Its natural he said. Yeah well, but a little dangerous, dont you think? Craig shrugs noncommittally, Beats me. He picks up his magazine and cracks it open. He flips the pages. How long have those two been married, anyway? Leigh looks over at him and she closes up her book and puts it on the table. Wow. She reaches for her tea. An honestly expressed sexuality, huh? She sips and stares into the cup. But just in behavior, though, no consequences. They use contraceptives.
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Yeah, that was my understanding of it. Those two seem awfully happy. I just wouldnt suspect something like that. You know? It worked out for them. Maybe its the, I dont know, the dropped pretense or something. According to this, of coursehe holds up the article, Symmetry and Sexual Attractivenessits just the way our libidos have adapted. Well, yes, of course, but wouldnt it drive you crazy? To know your partners out running wild? I mean, come on, who would really want that? Craig thinks about crushing the crisp starch of Tracis pressed uniform. He thinks about tugging her hair out of its high ponytail and smelling it. Burying his face in it. Feeling it on his chest. I dont know, honey, how much its an issue of what someone wants. I think its morewell lets see, how did Professor Munro put it? Acknowledging our natural behavioral potential. Leigh shakes her head in wonder. Its really just that simple. I mean, it really is. Leigh looks at Craig, and he can see the awe, the enthusiasm of science working away, clicking in her brain, variables and facts sliding into all the appropriate slots. God. That Professor Munro, she says, hes a genius of risk. Do you realize this? What a risk that is? A pretty big professional risk, Craig. Leigh covers her face and laughs. God, Maggie! He and Maggie! Can you even imagine? Craig laughs too and lies back against the pillow with practiced nonchalance. Yeah, how on Earth would you set a thing like that up? he says. The parameters, I mean? Logistics. Leigh sticks her finger in the tea to dunk the bag. She licks the finger. Its just the tiniest pause, and then: He didnt say anything about that? Outside, the plants feel the dirt. The flowers have already closed their faces to the thick dark night. Leigh holds the tea cup with both hands and when she looks at Craig he cant look away.
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He has to time it. He has to be sure its right. Well, actually, he says and he leans up on one elbow and he pauses long enough to flash Leigh his most charming look. His most vulnerable, trustworthy look. Then, as a co-conspirator, Craig smiles wide, and so does she. He shrugs. He takes his time. In the end, the two of them write up the contract in just under three hours. The signatures, snug like that, stacked together on the page, are like a couple of sleeping cocoons, yes. But let me tell you, there is a supercharge in that room. In their excitement they take out the whiskey and sip little sips. They discuss hypotheticals and set parameters and it gets to a point where the voltage in that room could set a forest on fire. Neither can believe the others audacity, their collective illicit secret. The sex is fantastic. For breakfast, they each eat more than their usual share. They have bacon with their sausage. They laugh at the funnies. They sing in the shower. There are of course all sorts of looks a woman gives a man. At the bank, the teller, a busty Chicana, all but winks. The girls waiting for the bus seem each to offer up the seats beside them, but its the redhead who smiles and Craig notes it with a special relish. And the idea of it all, the true idea the way that hes read about it in Leighs books, starts to tickle him pink. He knows about how the most viable is the female who has successfully reproduced once: shes veteran, fertile, and can endure the physical trials of gestation. Young mothers, their toddlers swaying on strollers, are suddenly irresistible. Sexy divorces seem to linger in every doorway on his block. Everywhere Craig looks the world is blooming with female possibility. The thing is, its not about living with no rules. The new phase in the primary relationship is by trial arrangement only, and will proceed for three months of experimentation time, effective immediately, he knows as much. Protection must always be worn, regardless of the circumstances. Obviously.
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Tests would be taken. Every six months. And yes, Leigh has full permission to use any information about this situation in any book on animal behavior that she might someday write, with the understanding of course that all names be changed. And regardless of whatever goes on when theyre out by the time they get home theres no telling, no hints, lips sealedbecause really, if its flaunted who wouldnt get jealous? The rules, ask Craig, are okay by him. The plan is just about a perfect one. Because there is something he knows, something he hasnt let on about. See, Craig and Leigh, theyve been together five years now, and Craig knows Leigh pretty well. Hes overheard her hushed girls-only-conversations, hes seen what she writes in her diary. Shes a sexual person, sure, but the thing about Leigh is that shes a one-man woman. There is such a type, you know. And shes embarrassed. She needs to feel comfortable. She takes a long time. For Leigh, Craig knows, three months is nothing. The two of them dated for a full three months at least before they ever so much as necked with abandon. But here, this way its perfect because Leigh can have her titillation, she can have her audacity, and itll be just like the daily thrill she gets at the zoo when she watches those captive Bonobos charge. Vicarious. Dangerous. And thrilling. Yes. But whats the appeal, really? The appeal is the possibility. That we came from that, that were still, underneath it all, like that. We dont have to do the things they do to prove it. Possibility, permission, the promise of adventure, its everything. At three-thirty, when Tracis shift starts, Craig slips on a clean t-shirt, cool, but not too much like hes trying. Sort of wind-blown hair. He dresses as if theres some woman in the room watching him, and he plays his music loud in the car and when he walks up to the automatic doors they open with what seems like a special flourish hes forgotten to note every other day of his life. He makes his selection carefully: thick steak. Sweet red
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grapes. Chocolate. Spearmint gum. Plain chapstick. One lotto ticket for luck. And pulpless Tropicana orange juice for all the promise of morning that it holds. Waiting in line, listening to Tracis scanner beep, he can see her with her barrettes and her earrings, and he feels already proud of himself. Its all foreplay. This consistent intensity. Craig knows its best like this when theres anticipation. He knows just what hell say, hes rehearsed it, hes ready. Her uniform, today, looks especially crisp. Fresh-pressed. A little tight. Hell just say it outright. Hell ask for next week, though, so she can have time to get excited about it. And hell be sure not to come back in until after, so she can build up some hope and he should do something extra, flowers. Daisies. For the first date. He knows how it will go, how shell laugh, how shell flush pink, how shell note the steak and wonder why he finally chose today of all days. When he gets to her he looks her straight in the eye. He stands as tall as he can. He uses his deep voice. The scanner beeps. She blinks twice. Oh. Greg. Thank you so much for asking, and Im flattered, I really am. She laughs. Thats so sweet. She smiles and he pictures the place hell take her: Diegos, on Oceanside, for oysters and beer, intimate, dark and they have booths there, good music on Fridays. Her pink lips. Her tiny hands. But I, wellheres the thing. Okay, listen, Greg, the thing is, Im afraid I have to say no. Okay? Im sorry. But please believe me when I say how flattered I am because I really am and you really are a nice guy. The magazine racks say space invasion. Elvis lives. The lights flicker bright and brighter. The total is clearly displayed. Sixteen twenty-seven. At first he thinks hes misheard and then she has to say paper or plastic and she seems embarrassed for him. And he wants to ask why. He wants to try again. It happens so fast. When he leaves it feels as if hes left his wallet, but he checks and he hasnt. He opens up the chocolate and eats it all right there in the parking lot. He finds out later why it is,
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though. He sees Traci downtown one day. She doesnt even have short hair but shes kissing another girl. On the cheek, yeah, but you could tell. No wonder. Fine. But with the teller it isnt as nice. Sorry, she says flatly. Did you still want your withdrawal? Thats it? Craig throws up his hands. You dont have to even think about it? Sorry to disappoint you, Mister Etalon. Youre married, thats why. Its not your business. This he was not expecting. With Traci it was some sort of fluke, but this? This tellers smiled at him before, he knows it. A special sort of smile. Not just any smile. Craig stands there blankly, considering his options. Maybe do they want it worded some other way? He looks back at the woman behind the plexiglass and starts again, he tries to start again, but she sighs and interrupts him before hes even half-way through his description of the restaurant hes selected, just for her, with lighting to complement her tone, and oysters on the half-shell, fresh and salty, the Martinis that she wouldnt believe, the Martinis that would just blow her mind. Look, Im not married, I just dont want a date with you and thats the end of the conversation. Now unless you have some business here with the bank? Leighs dream is Jordans face extra close. Jordans face inches from her face straight on filling up everything she can see and then sliding sideways, tilting full-frame until, inches away, he is sideways. He must be lying down. Where she can get him. Where she can touch him, and have him. He must be. After the teller, Craig drives to Kinleys Record Emporium and he decides that the first stranger to smile at him will be the
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one. Then he decides to try the first woman he can see wearing red. Then its the shortest skirt. The most obviously dyed hair. The employee of the month. Hes out of fucking luck. Its his shoes, his clothes, his teethis there something in his teeth? By the time he drives home, with the radio off, five miles over the limit, no dinner in his stomach and the good food gone bad in the trunk, Craig is in no mood to find the house empty. Which is, of course, exactly what he finds. There is a little note. With a heart. Sushi with the girls, it says. Craig crumples the little note into a little ball and he throws it on the floor. He orders a pizza. In the garden, something has knocked over the bird-feeder. A raccoon? A cat? On television they show the Lotto billboards around town. Its a giant jackpot. Millions and millions of dollars. The pizza, with its stingy cheese and sparse toppings, it just isnt very good. It just isnt good enough. Vicious systems exist, but its sort of ingenious too, the checks and the balances that are all set up. Take, for instance, the very earliest moments of the African spotted hyenas existence. Theyre born, they break free from the sac, and fight each other to the death. Thats what they do. First thing ever in life. It really is amazing. And in other ways, too. Because at first, for years, the researchersand well, yes, its true they were all male researchers, and its an implausible, enormous misunderstanding, but the fact is, they just didnt know how to categorize them. They didnt understand. How on earth, these earnest researchers thought, could there exist self-perpetuation in a species that is entirely homosexual? Well, testosterone does funny things to a female when its present like that in such high doses, muscle tone, aggression, and suffice it to say the clitoral shaft has to be seen to be believed. Leigh sits in her parked car and carefully, in the rearview mirror, she brushes on mascara. Tentative strokes. Or
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maybe believed isnt the word for what it is you see. Would a guy like Craig be able to understand it if he saw it with no description, with just his own binoculared eyes? Or would Craig check marks on graph paper and set out on a never-ending-hunt for what must be the most elusive female ever to meet the match of safari science? Leigh is pretty sure she knows. She can picture him and it isnt so much a failing as it is just a mindset. With the endowments of Ms Hyena, it may be more accurate to say she has to be imagined to be believed. Maybe its the seeing that mixes people up. Leigh checks the time. Twelve-twenty. She doesnt want to get there too early. She brought a book just in case. She checks the time again and then she checks her hair, shaking it out and fluffing it up. When she finds Jordans old phone number in her keepsake box, its a tattered sheet of notebook paper. Its an artifact from a foreign land of boyfriends past, a concrete detail to ground her somewhere in the swirl of her memorys fluctuating lust. When she thinks of what Jordan was like, she knows how he will squeeze her neck and lick her wrists. She knows just which movies to discuss. She knows that he will always stand up to get sugar for her tea. She sits in the car and she opens up her purse. She takes the well-worn scrap of paper out again and she holds the phone number in her hands. She looks at his blocky handwriting. The big J, the strong N. She remembers well the damp sweat against her cheek when Omar clutched at her in undergraduate heartbreak on the dance floor, she revisits high school with visions of the track team in mini-shorts hurling themselves over those high wooden barriers, and reminisces, one might even say regularly, about the perfect tempo of Jordans sophomore hips, his sloppy kisses, his drummers arms. But you have to understand, thats all perfectly normal, and whats more its in the past. All things considered, she felt that this experiment she and Craig were embarking upon was a noble one, a notch on her belt, a medal on her lapel. It was
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thrilling to put the science to the test. It was open-minded. Avant-garde. And the truth of it was, she felt proud of Craig for his unorthodoxy, his generosity of spirit, his relentless pursuit of knowledge, and especially for what she knew full well all of this required: his full deep faith in the security and foundation of their relationship. After all, what good is a loyalty born of restriction? If anyone had bothered to ask Leigh, thats what she would say. She has it planned out. But she doesnt want him to think anything bad like shes using him or something, so she decides not to tell Jordan outright. She touches the steering wheel. Maybe if she just doesnt bring it up at all. She puts the paper away, gets out of the car, and when they sit together for lunch Leigh sizes him up, searching for symmetry in the lines of his ear lobes and in the creases of his laugh lines. And its there. It is. The strong jaw, the cleft chin. Its there, all of it and more. Gianne is a sure thing. Okay. Enough is enough. Giannes been after Craig for years. A sure thing, because he remembers clearly kissing her at a party, and he remembers every time since how boldly she compliments his taste. In music, in books and in anything else that ever comes up whenever they find themselves again at the same sort of dimly lit, late night events. Its been a full three years since that kiss, yes, and they were both quite drunk, yes, but he and Leigh ran into Gianne just two months ago, and at the time he couldnt believe what he was hearing, but Gianne told Leigh that Craig was quite a catch, and she said it with a low-cut shirt and Craig standing right there listening. Gianne accepts with no questions asked. Okay. Which is a good sign, definitely. On their first date, after flattery and smiles and a fancy forty-five dollar dinner, after brushing knuckles in the snack bag which rests only inches from her bosom, Craig boldly grazes his hand against Giannes heavy left breast during the love scene at the Cineplex and she stands abruptly in the the24
ater, spilling popcorn in her wake. But instead of taking Craig home to ravish, she calls a taxi on her tiny phone and deserts the scene without even waiting to find out how it ends up on the big screen for Leo and Kate. In the bathroom mirror Leigh stares at her morning self. Women cloud their true faces every morning under concealer and powder and lipstick, with moisturizer and toner and oxy 10. At the same time, a sink away, men clear their faces from shadow as the razor blade scrapes away their only hope of disguise, increasing exposure. Women get perms. Men go bald. When its early Leigh looks smaller, less well-defined. She brushes her teeth and lets the foam dribble down her chin. Leigh knows things. She looks at herself. She knows things she doesnt quite let on about. For instance, Leigh knows that in evolutionary terms there is such a thing as antagonism. You see, whats good for the goose is not necessarily whats good for the gander. Obvious, maybe, but a thing to think about. A thing to take advantage of. Because whats really the point of this open evolutionary behavior if there isnt something at stake? Some sort of sperm competition or something, at least. She brushes her tongue. She brushes the roof of her mouth. Women dont need the urge for babies, thats not the way it works. All you have to want is the sex, and the restwell, it just happens for you one way or the other. And Leighs no different, she doesnt think shes any different, but what she wouldnt mind is just finding out. You know. Which one it is. Whos the better match for her particular genes. Its just a thing shes wondering. It would be crazy, she knows, to do sex without protection. Then again, she understands something that maybe Craig isnt clear on: an increment in the swiftness of the gazelle is a blow to the lion. Its simple. Its true. She spits. She rinses the sink. She feels faster. She feels invincible. And for no reason at
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all in the mirror she flexes both arms like a superhero. In the kitchen, clean-shaven Craig cooks breakfast. Cracks the eggs, saves the shells. When Leigh walks down the stairs hes got the newspaper spread out across the table and hes checking the numbers against it. Craig plays the lotto. Up to five tickets at a time. Maximizes his chance. Leigh jokes that the lotto is a self-imposed tax on people who are too stupid to grasp odds, a whole community who choose to punish themselves for failing the worlds math test. People like Craig. Who lose every week just to lose again the next. She sits down. She takes the plate he hands her. She eats the eggs hes scrambled. I was thinking, she says. Have you ever thought about, you know, babies, ever? Like us having some? What? Now? Craig looks up from the newspaper. Are you crazy, what are you talking about this for? Well, I dont know, maybe we should just she waves her hands vaguely around the kitchen, forget all this. You know, we could go to Uganda. Like I said. The Red Fern Twit, Craig. I wanted to do that, you know. Im serious about that. And yes, its a test, but she doesnt so much mean it as one until the hopeful words are already hanging in the kitchen air. Uganda? Are you out of your mind? Youre asking me now to go to Uganda? Jesus Christ, Leigh, whats the deal, here? Huh? Fine, she says. Fine. Real nice of you, Craig, you know. Sorry I asked. She stands up and puts on the kettle. She thinks of Jordans scent, she thinks of the place on her waist where Jordan held her down. With that arm. She reaches around and tries to recreate it. She smiles. She hums. She checks her watch, straightens her skirt, and Craig is watching her. Suddenly he sets down the paper. She looks at him, with his pathetic stack of lucky picks, the tension in his shoulders, those soggy scrambled
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eggs. Youre pregnant, thats it, right? Am I right? Leigh rolls her eyes. No, tell me, Craig: how exactly could I be? What, I dont know, you stopping by the sperm bank on your way home from work or something? Thats disgusting, Craig, and you know it. Leigh rinses her cup in the sink and sighs. Typical. I just was bringing up some suggestions, okay? You dont have to be so nasty. But when she looks back at Craig he looks so utterly defeated that in a sudden panic of condolence she reaches for polite, for interested-in-his-interests, for the vacuum that will suck the dead air out of the conversation and re-inflate it with banter. Friendly banter. Lovers banter. Look, I meant more like hypothetically, she says. Mainly you know, I was just thinking out loud. Its a dumb idea. Forget it. She tries to think of something else to say. Hows the plants? Begonias, right? The begonias? Sweetheart? Hows it going with that? She looks at Craig. Its not that Jordans better, its just that hes newer. And not so uptight. And he does the thing with the sugar for the tea. He pulls out the chair for her before she sits down. He makes her feel sexy. And plus, she thinks, I mean, what would I do if Craig died? Or if something bad should happen to him? It would be crazy, yes she knows, to do sex without protection. Crazy. Destructive. Theres Craig sitting there like that. It would be crazy, she thinks. And already she regrets it. The fact of the matter is, evolution and sexual selection and primal urges happen. Its not like not knowing makes it not happen. And so for Leigh there is no forty-five dollar dinner. There is no darkened Cineplex, no spilled popcorn. What there is for Jordan and Leigh is energetic heterosexual copulation. Extrapair copulation. Primal screaming copulation. Legs in the air, discarded clothing thrown with abandon and fierce untamed
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mating, wild outrageous lunch-break coitus, lock-the-bathroomdoor and park-in-secluded-spots sex. But also there is more. Aw come on, he slips into the booth, weve been doing nothing but these lunchy dinersLeigh, you gotta let me take you out someplace nice for a change. Friday night, huh, someplace like where we could grab a bottle of wine, what do you say? Jordan talks and Leigh watches his thick hair, his straight teeth. Its just that Im busy. With work. Ow, no, Im serious please, Jordie, says Leigh, and she leans in to sniff his clean man scent, tell me you respect the hours I put in, jesus I used to hate that about you. When he reaches over and sets his effective hand on top of hers, Leigh cant help but note the well-shaped joints, the unvarying proportion of those muscular, sturdy hands. Im a one-man woman, she thinks, I am, its just that I want to try this out and see. You cant, huh? Well. Maybe, Jordan arcs a brow, maybe next week if youre not too busy, maybe you could pencil me in, huh? Make me more than an afterthought? She ought to start carrying the heavy data-books around with her, make it more feasible. Craig is so different. Not so indignant. But then when Jordan orders his club sandwich with panache, Leigh thinks Yes, just like that. In a diner in the future my handsome kids could order food in just that way, with just that tone, that lilt, that cozy hospitality. And then Jordan, with that hand, squeezes her knee under the table and its all over. She slides closer to him. She smells him. She wants her hands in his hair. Another thing, she says, that used to drive me nuts. Whats that? The flirting with the waitress, yeah. Really? Huh, not so much the nicest compliment Ive ever gotten, you know. Jordan shifts in his seat and Leigh knows theres no point in
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resisting, and its all she can do to avoid burying her face in the scent underneath his arm. And you still smoke, she says. People hate that. Vicious today, huh? Think I dont notice your nasty habits? Okay, and what time is it because youre always late. Okay, Jordan grabs her wrist, completely irresponsible. What? Please. How behind are you, he bites his lip, that you work weekends. Right? Leigh feels her cheeks go hot. She looks at Jordan. She looks at his hand on her wrist. Also, she says, your terrible posture. He smiles. The other hand is on her knee, just as it would be in any romance novel of hers. His shirt stretches tight across sturdy eager shoulders that are so different from Craigs, shoulders that are underneath that shirt just like the brawny shoulders embossed on any front cover. Christ, Jordan says, Im tempted to just take the afternoon off again, huh? He smiles. Yeah? Shall we? Hey, I mean, Im tempted, I really am, this crazy schedule it seems like itll be June before youve got anything other than lunch dates available for a smoker like me, huh? He squeezes tighter before he lets go of her wrist and Leigh feels the blood pump under her skin. The waitress brings out their drinks and Leigh watches her give gorgeous Jordan the once-over. Jordan smiles and Leigh knows this experiment she and Craig have embarked upon is not a rationalization. It is not an excuse to get away with it. Thats not how evolutionary theory works. Like it or not, sexual selection is just the explanation for how it already is. Why we already are this way that we so irrevocably are. Hey come on, you dont want to slip outside, Jordie? Have a quick smoke?
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Leigh, Jordan pats her thigh, youre going to have to ask nicer than that. Like it or not, the body does tricky things on your behalf. To engage in autoerotic sex play, to jill-off, masturbate, pet the kitty, diddle the skittleits all a secret weapon, and Leigh knows it. Maybe if you take a new lover, for instance, one like Jordan for instance, with his broad flat chest and his narrow muscular waist, well then maybe you might be more prone, in his immediate absence, to go on a solo run. On the off days. The days when hes not available. Just because you want to. Youre compelled to. It seems innocuous enough, but what that does is it arms the womb with the deadly forces of vaginal secretions, more deadly than an ordinary man might imagine. The vulva, inviting as it may be, is not a hospitable place for the males procreative offerings. Leigh knows as much. Thats why they come in alkaline ejaculate, and by the millions. Acidic, lethal, and abundant, when the masturbated cervix trembles and dips in orgasmic spasms it is these natural secretions that are sucked deeply up and which then wait to disarm and pulverize whatever unsuspecting ejaculate later enters the scene. Leigh watches Jordan fiddle with his watch. She wants him to be done eating. She wants to leave with him. She feels his thigh against her thigh. Like if for instance on one of those selfgratification days maybe your usual partner should enter the scene and have his hopeful, earnest ejaculation effectively immobilized? Well, then the natural, spontaneous cycle of desire is acting for you as birth control. But situation-specific birth control. Stacking odds in favor of the new lover. With whomon nonmasturbatory daysyou maybe experience similarly timed, incredibly intense climax. During which the dipping spasms of the cervix dunk into and carry up his seed. That is if you were, on one of those days, to happen to engage in natural, unprotected copulation, of course. People are built for this sort of thing.
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So she starts pulling new moves in bed and Craig cant believe it. The last time, he found the manual with Picassos nude on the cover, but this time, hey his confidence is low, its a touchy subject, and hes not so sure. The decision to follow her is maybe a bad decision. Its maybe a decision made in the thick haste of the moment. But its what has to be done. Here is the salt and the pepper. The frying pan hisses. He throws the one with red in the yolk down the drain. He puts the kettle on the stove. The thing is, shes never home late, and as far as Craig can tell, she doesnt plan anything out of the ordinary. Unless its someone at work. Unless her construct is so elaborate that she writes nonsense in her daily planner. He calls in sick to the officefood poisoningand he waits around the block for Leighs car to coast out onto the street and turn left and enter the onramp. Then he has to wait for some other cars to go first so it isnt so obvious. There was one time he thought she maybe had a date. He wants to just ask. But she doesnt ever ask him anything. It mustve gone badly. She doesnt seem in the least bit concerned. Which must mean that theres nothing going on. Because if there were, well then she would be jealous, then shed be thinking hes doing the same. He pulls out on to their street. He holds back behind the pickup. He keeps her in his sights. Research lab today, observations tomorrow, he knows, he checked so even if he loses her for a second its okay, its no big deal. Neither of them has mentioned the experiment since they signed the papers. Leighs underwear drawer doesnt look any better stocked. Her diary is nowhere to be found. She gets on the freeway. Shes three cars ahead. He changes lanes. Does she want me to marry her, Craig thinks, is that it? Fine, he thinks. Ill ask her. Ill marry her. Fine by me, done deal. But what he sees when he follows her is not what he wants to see. What he sees even from across the street is a flush rising
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up Leighs throat and coloring her cheeks. He sees a tall, stylishly dressed and surely well-endowed man meet her outside the research labs for lunch and then he sees that there is no Wednesday yoga class at six-thirty. Six-thirty comes and goes and her lone car sits like a lost sock in the labs lot 4C and Craig follows them both packed in together in the mans shiny red truck. The tall man drives a truck. The tall man touches her skin. He talks inches from her ear, he makes her blush. Whats worse, they go to the travel store and come out with shopping bags bulging full of things Craig cant see. Uganda! Jesus Christ, thinks Craig, I have to act fast. They climb into the car and Craig follows them. Craig thinks about killing them. They stop only once, for milkshakes, like this is some kind of a joke. Women are built to be promiscuous. So are men, but its no big deal, everyone knows about that. With women its like a secret. With everything going on inside where no one can see what happens. But there are pros and cons to every system, Craig knows as much. There are fertility clinics everywhere. Probably one in this town. Ill look it up, he thinks, if she leaves me Ill go there. Ill fill out the forms. Ill spread my seed, my genes will propagate and then well see whats fair. Then well see who wins. From three cars behind he follows them. Leigh. And that man. Together. SAT scores? Hobbies? Height, weight, coloring. History of heart disease? Favorite foods? Craig pictures the faceless hordes of fertility-seeking women reviewing his sheets, scanning his scores, measuring his dick and passing him on, only just one contestant, only just one in a stack of twenty, fifty, and hundred or more. But he knows hes got what it takes. He knows that there is an inequality. A female failing. A score one for the home team. He envisions his private resources, an army just waiting in the wings, and for every woman who says no thanks, he has inside himself millions more to compensate. He is filled with more of himself than he could ever possibly use. He
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imagines it and he sits in his car outside of the research lab long after Leighs Honda has left hugging the curves of the lot behind the truck of her tall man in his fancy well-cut suit. Which is bad, yes. A low point. Yes. And the next days even worse. Its true. Because the next dayobservation dayCraig lurks like an assassin in the crowds at Leighs workplace, just to discover the extent of it. I mean does this guy come for her every day, or what? Hold her hand in the enclosure? Feel her up while she charts data? Suckle her toes over their mutual joy at punctuated equilibrium? Craig doesnt even use the family pass they share, no he buys his anonymous ticket for full price and he loses her as she passes through security clearance, but hes visited before, he figures where to slip between the buildings, how to climb past the fake moats, and how to watch from far away. He knows where she sits. He has his binoculars in case he needs them. He has come prepared. What he discovers is this: a woman is an animal. It might not be clear at first but that is a fact. Leigh sits still with her clipboard, crouching just inside the enclosure checking off things on her chart like who grooms who and how often and under what circumstances. Craig knows as much. Shes shown him her weekly forms often enough. Hes even walked past here before, on the public tour, but what he hadnt noticed before, and what he notices now, is the sheer animal stench of them, all these hairy, hooting apes, swaying together under San Diegos pathetic attempt at jungle trees and cavorting and copulating and grinning and stinking. As he settles in Craig feels enveloped in the stench like a tent zipped up behind him. Surrounded with leaves of camouflage Craig tries to let the greenery and the concrete of the zoo calm him down get it together, he thinks, just relax, no one can see youbut when he touches the unforgiving ground the dirts packed tight and it wafts up into the air and into his dry mouth and becomes just another part of the thick living smell of them.
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He envisions the tall man touching Leigh in the back of the truck and theres that and then theres the meaty thick fur stench and he wants to heave. This has to stop, he thinks, I have to stop this. All the while he has the ring in his pocket and the checkbook balance to prove its deadly seriousness. He pictures the way her face looked. He has the black velvet box with the ring inside and whatever else pours out when he opens up that box for her tonight, the ring inside is pure undistilled hope. It can be taken care of fair and square, he thinks, and we can move on from this and get married and be normal and no one will ever have to know. Uganda, he thinks, you never know what Uganda might be like. He peeks over the bushes at Leigh and like it or not there it all is in all its glory spread out right before his very eyes. It is the sex. The sex is happening. In person it is so much faster. My god, the smell. All Craig had ever seen were the slides. Hed only ever read about it. When hed taken the tour theyd been grazing or something but Jesus Christ they werent doing this. They werent eating bugs from each others heads and smearing wet sticky fruit on their overlarge handlike feet and rolling on their backs in autoerotic acts that involve all the apparent ecstasy fruit offers to those who use it well and without shame. But here they are doing it all now, right in front of him, this unsettling sex in the flesh right here in front of his hidden, stooping self, here they are without shame engaged in the sex act not twenty feet from Leigh and her clipboard, rolling together like that right there, face to face, arms clasped, rumps swinging wildly in focused concentration. Wheezing. Hollering. Straining. For Craig the most deeply upsetting aspect is the sweet shit smell. In his mouth. The static warmth in that salty dank scent as it settles in around him, and in his lungs and in his nose and his mouth the stink blooms. G-G rubbing, groin to groin, females together, sliding past each other and clutching at each other and sharing food while theyre at it,
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sliding past each other not leisurely, no, at a frantic hundred beats a second, so fast so that its like theyre joined together at that sticky pink fleshy mound and struggling in a blur of motion to break free. Standing there proudly on two legs theyre like cavemen, not like apes, not like magazine articles. It is a violence of the senses. Those sexual swellings. Naked, bulbous and shining pinker than bubblegum. The grotesque grinning lips they pull away to reveal sharp overlarge teeth is clearly a warning, clear as any Craig has ever seen. The shrieking and the putrid reeking warm rotten-dog stench. The electric crackle in the air. The enormous hands, the over-long arms. And heres Leigh, in the middle of it probably thinking of that tall bastard in the fancy suit. Here is Leigh, with these apes all calling out to her and to each other, hooting and panting like pornographic foreigners or seals or tribesmen with sharpened sticks and jackals howling at the moon. And she doesnt notice. She doesnt care. In a trembling unnerved panic of alarm, from in his small dirty hiding place Craig stares out across the enclosure at Leigh. She hears them. She sees them. And like an animal without shame she is at home amongst them.
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Midwest Weather Glenn Sheldon
Midwest Weather
Glenn Sheldon
1. The aftermath of a storm is more after than math. After the calendar starts anew, again, we must never forget chasing pages of our diaries across land flattened by slow glaciers. 2. Another tornado warning: sirens that aren't the sirens of German poetry. We rush to the basement where we have been hiding boxes we may never unpack. Do any contain love letters? 3. The weathervane spins around and around. Winds are monogamous only after they become echoes anyone can ignore. Look, a flying horse--but where is its rider? Or who the puppet? The windows rattle but never break, unlike theocracies. 4. Snow in spring: a wedding dress worn long after the wolves have gone home to darknesses just outside of city limits. Wet snow, tears failing to become pearls.
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blue on blue John Azrak
blue on blue
John Azrak
qfter Ruth Stone
an asiatic dayflower, pollock's blue poles, the blue clay on cape cod. tibet's milk-blue roofs, a ming vase, the blue balls after the grind of a slow dance. the blue-tiled mosques of isfahan, the lovers' blue bedspread, the anti-christ's blue turban. the blue spot on the lower back of newborn asian babies, oregon's crater lake. miles davis's kind of blue, the protective blue string syrians tie around the necks of their animals. the blue beads sewn on iranian childrens' clothing to ward off evil spirits. the blue of robins' eggs, picasso's woman with blue hands, the baby born with a hole in her heart. maya blue, blue grass, blue tourmaline, arabian desert rain, glacier ice. the mother's pale blue eyes, the daughter's pale blue eyes.
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The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills
The Banks of the Sava

Joe Mills
t was a beautiful, clear night in late May. The day had been disgustingly humid, as the early summer sun had started to fire up after several days of rain. But the night was a bit cooler and decidedly bearable. The four longhaired Americans were on their way down the street. They walked with the cocky swagger of young men looking for fun in another country. Individually, they could not be easily singled out as foreigners, but together they stuck out like a sore thumb. Neil was trying not to stick out. He wanted to be noticed as little as possible. He was wearing the green ring-t-shirt that he had bought because it had no easily identifiable American qualities and a pair of jean shorts. He had on his beat-up skater shoes. He blended in. At least he thought he blended in. Over the next few months he would feel successful in fooling several taxi drivers with his spoton recitation of the street addresses he had memorized. He would convince countless other people on the street that he was no different than them by simply saying nothing at all. He could always blend in with the scenery, but he wouldnt be able to tonight. He couldnt hide or disappear or camouflage himself with the dirty cracked-gray buildings of the city. They were meeting the girls tonight and they knew he was no Serb. They had met the girls a couple of nights before at a place called the Red Caf. Red was a very popular color in Belgrade. They were very proud of their socialist heritage. The football clubs were Red Star Belgrade and FC Partizan Belgrade and they both had logos with a red star. Neil had even seen a small coffee shop called Caf la Revolucion that had a sign picturing none other than Che Guevara, which he found to be hilarious. Che was undoubtedly spinning in his grave, he thought. They embraced their socialist roots and still praised Tito as the father
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of their nation. They all seemed very nostalgic for better times. Not the girls, though. Not the young people. They were moving forward without any particular direction. Anywhere other than where they were. They studied and partied and took their tests and danced and did their best to be cool. Their cool was an imported cool. Imported from Western Europe, which was imported from America, which was sort of, on average, sevenand-a-half-years-out-of-date cool. But Neil didnt care. He was sick of state-of-the-art-twenty-first-century-American cool, anyway. He could blend in and feel cooler than they were, only if by virtue of his knowing that their cool was out of date. The girls were very friendly and said they would show the group around. Tonight they were taking the four guys to a place down by the river, or maybe on the river. None of the guys knew exactly because there were always a few language discrepancies. They did know that the place was called Exile. Neil cringed at the name. He knew what it would be like and he dreaded it. He could just feel the horrible music creeping up his leg and onto his back while making its way towards his ears where they would bring certain doom. He had nothing better to do, though, and he felt like an adventure, however idiotic it might be. He wanted to explore more of the city. He wanted to stick with his friends. The four of them waited outside the Red Caf to meet the girls. The Red Caf would turn out to be an inescapable landmark on their summer landscape. Whenever they met someone, they met them there. It was halfway down Skadarska, the same street they lived on. It was a narrow cobblestone street that gently sloped downhill, lined with cozy restaurants, cafs, and art galleries. It was only open to pedestrians, wandering musicians, and stray dogs. At the bottom of the hill was the BIP Brewery, home to Belgrades finest blue-collar beer, and where the street ended sat the Green market where farmers peddled fresh produce. At night the street became alive with music and romantically illuminated for the many handholding couples who strolled along.
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Neil suspected there were few streets in Europe more beautiful. The guys were supposed to be there at ten oclock, but were a few minutes late. It didnt matter because everyone and everything in Serbia was even later. Except for Biljana. She was always on time. She was admirably on time. It was as though she couldnt wait to see them, or maybe just some of them. Maybe really only one of them. She was already outside the Red Caf as promised, and she came to greet them. Ciao, Billi-ana, Lou said. Ciao, Ciao, she greeted each one of them. She said the others would arrive shortly. They all stood in the middle of the street and chatted for a while. Neil didnt really do much talking. He was always quiet, with the idea being that someone interesting would find him mysteriously attractive while all others would simply leave him alone. Biljana spoke wonderful English and Neil loved to listen to her. Theres something torturously magical about the Eastern European accent that drives a young man crazy. Biljana had long black hair that she had put into a ponytail. She was wearing her glasses tonight and Neil hadnt recognized her when he first saw her. She had perfect teeth. She said it was because she was an only child, and she often remarked how fortunate she was to be the only one. There werent many large families in Serbia. No one made enough money to have more than two children. Neil later met one Serbian girl who told him that her aunt had been the subject of a special news story in her hometown because she had four children. Biljana was wearing white pants and a t-shirt and had brought the same sweater she had worn the other night in case it got cold. They later found out that people there didnt have more than a few changes of clothes. Even the girls. It was mindblowing for the Americans. Neil found himself explaining on several occasions to different people how American girls have astronomical amounts of clothing and its hard to catch them
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wearing the exact same thing more than once. He figured that Biljana had three pairs of pants. It was simply unfathomable. But the amount of clothes a girl had never really factored into his equation. She was very pretty and he liked her. He could have easily fallen in love with her he supposed, but he wasnt. He knew his own pathetic behavior well, and this was the kind of girl he could become enamored with. She seemed especially interested in Lou but Neil didnt really care. He just kept quiet and hoped she would form the opinion that he was a nice guy and possibly slightly cool. The other girls showed up within about ten minutes. They all greeted each other with ciaos. Ivana was wearing all white, and rather tightly. She was tall and not quite as attractive as she seemed to be the night they had first met her. Quentin instantly took her hand and kissed it and tried to say something suave. He was on day three of his four-day plan and playing the unlikely role of the boyfriend to the amusement of his companions. Maria was very short and had Pat Benetar styled, jet-black hair. She was very cute and had large brown eyes. Lou took an immediate fancy to her. He said that she had the best eyes ever and that he knew he said ever a lot but this time he really meant ever. There were two new friends as well, a guy and another girl, whom they had not yet met. This is Jasna, said Biljana, and this is Igor. Ciao, ciao, they all said as they shook hands. This is Lou, Keith, QC, and Neil, she introduced them. Theyre the rock band from California. Jasna was a stunning, tall and thin blonde. She looked like a model as many of the young Serbian girls did. One taxi driver told them, Serbia is best place for women. They were told that many times by many different people. They always agreed. I dont know what the fuck Kerouac is talkin about cause Ive been to Des Moines, Quentin said once, the most beautiful girls in the world are here. Igor was just slightly shorter than Neil and
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was dressed in cargo shorts and a plaid button-up shirt. He had spiked hair. After introductions were made the group began walking. They walked in an unorganized cluster as they made their way up the street and around the corner to Republic Square. The nights were always busy and interesting in Belgrade. It felt like a James Bond movie and at any minute some BMW would come plowing out of an alleyway being chased by motorcycle thugs. It felt like Europe to Neil. It felt like history. The city was dirty and many of the buildings made Neil depressed when he looked at them. They must have been beautiful at some point, he thought, but now they were just grey. He never actually saw much white in the so-called White City. He thought maybe the name referred to the racial makeup of the population. The young hipsters made their way through the square, which was bordered by the national theater and the national museum and marked by the Horse in the center. It was a giant statue of a General on a horse. No one seemed to remember who he was, some Hapsburg or some Djordjevic prince, maybe. He was only greened copper now. The square was crowded and lively and still full of pigeons. The nine of them weaved through the many outdoor cafs on the square and began walking through the pedestrian mall that ran adjacent to it. The street was lined with designer clothing and shoe stores. There was Jagger, United Colors of Benetton, Nike, and Adidas. Neil wondered how these stores stayed open because it seemed like no one ever bought anything. They just looked in the windows. They walked through the mall for a few blocks until Biljana led them down a side street and down a flight of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a large but shallow puddle of water with a broken two-by-four lying in it that probably once served as a makeshift bridge. The girls carefully navigated the puddle with help from Lou and Quentin. Neil was the last one to cross and tried to jump over it, but his left foot landed in the puddle, half-soaking his shoe. He tried to act cool and pre42
tend that it didnt bother him, but when he looked up everybody was already moving on and no one seemed to notice or care. They walked down a narrow street that smelled like the garbage there had not been picked up for weeks. There were many smells in Belgrade, but this particular street was one of the more consistently odorous in town. After a few blocks they turned south onto another street and made several more turns until coming to a very large street. This street stretched far ahead and Neil could see that the orange, glowing street lamps crossed to the other side of the river. There wasnt much traffic and the nine of them quickly crossed over to the other side to make their way across the bridge. There was an air of excitement as they approached the river. Maybe it was the fact that Neil had never really crossed a river by foot. Or maybe it was the beauty of the city at night. It was a much more beautiful city at night. In the darkness, all that could be seen was what they wanted you to see. Only the beautiful buildings with gleaming lights illuminating them dotted the landscape. The dirt, the crumbling walls, the smokestack clouds, and the hollow shells of buildings left by NATO smart bombs were all invisible in the darkness. It was scenic propaganda, but it happens everywhere. The group began to spread out as they started across the bridge. Hey, what river is this? someone asked. This is the Sava, Igor answered. Over there is the Danube. Neil looked over the side of the bridge and saw the fluid, silky-black Sava as it twisted and churned all the little streams of light reflected on it. Then he looked to the North and saw where it met the larger and even blacker Danube. The castle, Kalemagden, sat on top of the hill right where the two rivers met. It was all lit-up and from this distance it looked more imposing and intact than it actually was. They had gone to the castle on their very first day in the city. Neil was fascinated at its history and beauty, as well as its disrepair. To the right of the castle were the
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golden spire of the old church and the rest of Old Belgrade. They were making their way across the river into New Belgrade, Novi Beograd. The bridge seemed to stretch for miles, and as Neil was walking he began to notice distinct rifts in the group. He had somehow fallen behind Lou and Keith and the girls. He turned around to see Quentin and Ivana twenty yards behind him playing all sorts of lovey-dovey handholding games. He had to laugh at that. It was definitely out of character for Quentin. Sometimes it seemed as though he hated women, but the two things he worked hardest at were getting drunk and getting laid. The rest of the group was ahead of Neil. Lou was by far the most interesting member of the group, if only by virtue of being the most talkative, and Keith was the funniest, as well as the shortest. They received most of the attention from the girls. Neil was the quietest, so he found himself with a safety cushion to the front and rear that would make any Drivers Ed. teacher proud and anyone else feel a bit lonely. He had been trying to keep himself within earshot of Keith or Lou through the entire walk but found his attention had slipped away. He had been taken in by the view from the bridge. He walked faster to catch up with the group. By the time he caught up with the rest of the group they had already reached the other side of the river. He joined them as they were all laughing. Billy-ANA, laughed Maria. Whats so funny? asked Lou. You keep calling me Billy-ANA. Its not Billy-ANA. Its Biljana. Igor and the girls were all laughing at him as he tried to pronounce it right. They waited for Quentin and Ivana to catch up before going any further. There was a wide stone stairway leading pedestrians down to the west bank of the river. Once the whole group was caught up they made their way down the stairs with Biljana and Maria leading. Lou was leading
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the conversation and Neil was still pretending to be participating. At the bottom of the stairs was a clearing that looked like a dirt parking lot. There were mangy, weed-like bushes and trees scattered around the base of the bridge. They began to walk down the path towards the river. The dusty clearing was bisected by a small paved road that ran all along the bank. Across the road, there were giant steps that lead about twenty feet down the dike almost to the water level. Neil actually moved ahead of the group and down the steps to be the first to get a sense of the river. It smelled exactly like any American river: dirty and fishy and uninviting as the Mississippi. He took in the sights all around him. He looked up to his left at the long bridge they had just crossed. It was lit from the underside by lights that gave it an orange glow. There was graffiti on the underside of the bridge, and some of it was quite a distance out from the bank. He wondered who would have ventured out so far underneath the bridge and what they needed to share with everyone so desperately. Directly in front of him was the hulking skeleton of a barge lodged against the bank. It was all rusted metal beams and dusty wooden planks and it sat half in the water and half on the rocks below the bank. He thought it looked like you could climb out onto it but that it would probably collapse if you did. He would never dare trying, anyway. The group began walking south along the river, following the throngs of other young Serbs who were flocking to the riverbank. They walked for what seemed more than a mile along the river. Neil was still lingering outside the conversation while Lou and Keith were stirring laughter in their new friends with questions about Serbia and jokes about America. He was still taking in the sites and sounds of it all. They came upon a large and imposing sculpture that stood on a flat plane above the riverbank, looming over all who passed. He wondered what it was. It looked like some sort of monument but seemed unnoticed by all the people passing by. It was a giant arching pillar made of
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jagged pieces of stone. It looked like some sort of a modern art piece that was unpopular with the viewing public. It looked painfully ignored. Dozens of young people passed by and he wondered if any of them noticed it or new what it was. They finally came within sight of the source of the ominous boom, boom, boom that had been growing ever since they got off the bridge. Neil looked ahead and saw what looked like a boat, or perhaps a barge, all aglow in neon lights and emitting the now frighteningly close thumping sounds. There were people everywhere. As they got closer, he saw that there were actually three separate boats. The first one was not very crowded and lit with mostly green and blue neon lights. The second slightly more crowded and colored red and purple. They passed by the first two and finally came to the third, which was glowing pink and purple. All three were booming with the same thumping techno music and Neil began to wonder if their decision would be based solely on color. Then he realized that the last boat was the loudest, most crowded, and most grotesquely pink and purple, and that somehow these repulsive qualities combined to make it the most popular and, therefore, the most logical choice. This was the place to be. This was Exile. He rolled his eyes as it became inevitable that he would have to step aboard this technodoom vessel. Lou looked back at him as they got in line to enter and smiled. Well, here we go, he said, with a what-the-hell kind of look on his face. They walked passed the menacing-looking bouncers and down the steep metal stairs that lead to the gangplank. Once they were aboard Neil became even more grief stricken. It was crammed full of people. There were feet and elbows everywhere and it was difficult to move. The girls navigated the group through the crowd and found a spot at the bar. It was also right next to the bathroom. Neil found room close by to lean on the outer railing of the boat. He always liked leaning against things.
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It looked so much cooler and more natural than being by himself and just standing on his own. Quentin ordered them all beers and the girls ordered various mixed drinks. Neil quietly resented it all on the railing. He didnt talk to anyone until Keith came up to him and handed him a beer. Thanks, buddy, he shouted. So, how are you enjoying the, uh, techno boat? Keith asked. Oh, great. Neil shouted back sarcastically. Keith laughed and patted him on the shoulder. Then he turned back to talk to the rest of the group. Neil turned around and looked out across the river. He could see much of the southern half of the city. His eye was drawn to the great dome of the large church in the center of town. It, too, was illuminated, and from its silver dome shined two beacons of light at perfect geometric angles. They beamed upwards into the night sky almost infinitely. He noticed the thick rope sagging in the water that tethered the barge to the riverbank. He imagined the line snapping and sending him adrift forever on the high seas of techno hell and it made him shiver. He prayed the rope would hold. He remained there for a while, watching bottles and other debris float through the water, not talking to anybody. It was impossible to hear, anyway. The constant BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM of the music was deafening. It was techno, or house, or drum and bass, or whatever the hell they call it. He didnt know what it was but he knew he hated it. All night long it boomed in the same monotonous song. At least it seemed like all one song. Every once in a while, the BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM would slow down and go boomboom boomboomthen go full on back into BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! There werent even that many kids dancing. The few that were dancing were having the time of their lives, though. Some of them were tripped out on ecstasy or just plain drunk. Neil watched one blissful dancer who had placed himself
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right in the stream of traffic to the bar so everyone passing would have to brush against him as they came and went. He was in a deep, dazed trance and gyrated with pleasure every time someone shoved him out of the way. The rest of the kids didnt seem to be having much fun at all. They were just standing around, looking as if they were waiting for someone to pay attention to them. All the girls were dolled up and standing around with their friends smoking cigarettes and waiting to be hit on. The boys all stood at their tables with their shirt collars turned up, not having a clue. There were so many beautiful women. They all smoked, though. Neil didnt like girls who smoked, but it seemed like everyone in Serbia did. It was like a national pastime. He began to wonder at the science of it all. It was a strange phenomenon. Neil stood there leaning against the railing for a long time. Lou or Keith or Quentin would come and talk to him briefly every now and then. Mostly he just found himself making way for people to get in line for the bathroom. The constant booming drowned out most of his thoughts. Hed lost all concept of time. He watched silently as his friends all talked with the girls. Keith was talking to Biljana, Quentin was cuddling with Ivana, and Lou was pathetically massaging Marias shoulders. They were all drunk except Neil. He only had a few beers and didnt feel like drinking much more. Suddenly, Jasna approached him. So are you having fun? she shouted over the music. Neil was nervous talking to such a beautiful girl. He tried to think of a funny answer. Oh yeah, he said. I was thinking about going for a swim. She laughed. Okay. Lets go, she said. She put her foot up on one of the wires along the bottom of the railing as if she was going to climb over and jump in. Neil laughed and did the same. Then the joke was over. She tried to make more out of the conversation.
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So whats it like in California? He tried to keep himself from laughing and stuttered while he tried to think of a response. Uh its, uh great. You know, the weather is nice, he lied. How big is Santa Clara? she asked. He had no idea. Quentin had told the girls that they were from California because it sounded much cooler than being from Iowa. Neil tried to play along. Its pretty big. L.A. is just one really big place, he replied. Biljana told me that you guys know lots of famous people, she said with her irresistible accent. Yeah. After that the conversation ended. Neil couldnt keep up with all the questions for which he had no answers. It didnt really seem like she wanted to know anything about him anyway. She rejoined the rest of the group and Neil remained alone on the railing. His legs began hurting him and he tried to stretch them out, but there was no room. He had wanted to go home a long time ago. A short while later, Biljana joined him. She had a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. She was drinking Lashko Pivo, a Slovenian beer. QC told me that youre the genius of the band, she said. Yeah, I guess, replied Neil rather bashfully. They talked about music for a while. He found out that she had rather good taste in music. She asked him a few questions about Lou, to which he provided answers befitting a guy trying to put in a good word for a buddy. He had suspected that she had a little crush on Lou. It didnt bother him, though. They talked for a few more minutes before she returned to the rest of the group. Eventually the group began to show signs that it was ready to leave. Neil had been wondering how much longer they were
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going to stay for several hours. He thought about walking back by himself a few times, but decided not to. He didnt want anybody to think he was weird. Now they were definitely leaving, much to his relief. The girls collected their purses and all of their things as Keith and Lou tried to figure out the bar tab. They decided they would treat the girls for the night and paid the bill. Quentin threw in a noticeably small sum for the amount he drank. Neil didnt pay anything because he didnt think he drank that much. They began to plow their way through the giant mass of sweaty flesh towards the exit. Neil felt more relieved with every step further from the booming subwoofers. They crossed the gangplank and went back up the metal staircase onto the riverbank. Then they started to walk home. Neil found himself isolated in the group again as they walked along the river. Keith and Lou were still entertaining the girls, and Quentin and Ivana were still holding hands. Igor was walking close by Neil, though, and he could tell that he was going to say something. He hadnt really talked to Igor all night, and he didnt know what he would be like. Eventually they were walking side by side, and Igor started to speak. He had an almost feminine voice with a thick accent. Do you go to school? he asked. Yeah, replied Neil. What do you study? Philosophy. He hated telling people what his major was. It always seemed to get strange responses and made people ask him lots of questions. I took a philosophy class once, Igor replied. I didnt like it. It was difficult. What do you study? Neil asked after a brief pause. Im studying for the dental exams, he answered. Thats interesting, Neil said, slightly surprised. Its difficult. Besides its not really what I want to do. Im
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going to be the prime minister of the country some day, he said with a smile. Neil became very interested when he said this. It seemed like an odd, but sincere aspiration. Thats great. I would vote for you if I could. Igor laughed and thanked him. They talked for a little while about politics, both Serbian and American. It was a somewhat superficial conversation, but Neil didnt mind because it was interesting. None of the other young people he had met seemed to care about politics. He noticed as they were walking that they had come upon the monument that he had wondered about earlier. Just as he was about to ask if he knew what it was, Igor interrupted. Do you see this monument? he said. There was a Nazi camp here in World War Two. Wow. Thats interesting, Neil remarked. Yes. They killed many Orthodox Serbs and Jews here, right by the river. Neil became silently amazed. He thought about the many thousands of people dying by the dirty, smelly river. He thought about the inadequacy of statues and monuments in commemorating tragedies like these. The monument was erected to remind people of the history of this particular place but now it only serves as a point of reference on the journey to a floating discotheque. It seemed very wrong. You know Belgrade was bombed three different times in the twentieth century. Uh, yeah. Neil replied. Yes. By the Austrians in World War One, by the Germans in World War two, and by the Americans or by NATO I mean in 1999. Neil felt awkward all of a sudden. He thought that perhaps he was about to get an earful of resentment. He didnt say anything. He didnt want to offend him. He had been wondering
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when he was going to get his first dose of anti-American sentiment. I dont hate Americans, you know, said Igor. Oh. Well thats good, said Neil, trying to make light of the situation. No. I dont hate anyone, Igor continued. Everybody thinks that we Serbs hate lots of people. They say that we are supposed to hate the Croats or the Bosnians or the Albanians, but I dont hate any of them. Neil remained silent. What have they ever done to me? Igor went on. The older generations hate them, but not me. The young people should not hate anyone. Igor paused as if he was allowing Neil a chance to respond. Neil tried to think of something positive to say. Wow. Thats great, he said. He felt moved by what Igor said. He liked the idea that the young generation of a nation could be so optimistic and willing to put the past behind it. Maybe he just liked the fact that it seemed like there were young people who cared about anything at all. He continued to listen. I dont hate the Americans, either, he said. Milosevic was a terrible dictator. He was never popular with the people. Neil suddenly got the urge to ask a question. What was it like during the bombings? he asked. He felt embarrassed immediately after he opened his mouth and didnt expect an answer. Igor looked down at the ground and smiled to himself. I will tell you, and many other people will tell you that it was the best time of my life, he said. Neil was shocked. He couldnt understand how this could be so. You see, every night they would bomb Belgrade, he explained. And in the day everything was closed. Nobody had
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to go to work or school. So we partied all day long. Neil was amazed as Igor explained that every day, thousands of people would gather in Republic Square and drink themselves stupid. They would ride around on the tops of cars and set off firecrackers, and drink all day long. It was the best time of their lives. You know my friend and I would sit on the rooftop every night and watch the bombs fall, he added. It was so beautiful. Werent you afraid? Neil asked. No. They were only bombing military targets. Only one time was there a bomb that landed close to us and it shook the whole building like an earthquake, replied Igor. Neil had always imagined people seeking shelter in basements and a state of martial law on the streets. He had seen some of the bombed buildings. They were still standing several years after they were hit. Their outer facades were still standing but they were a mass of crumbling concrete inside. It turns out that smart bombs are very smart, leaving a useless hollow shell behind. They didnt have the money to tear them down and rebuild. Maybe they didnt want to tear them down. Maybe they began to love the look of destruction in the city. After all, it seemed like all the other buildings were crumbling. It all began to make sense to him. The conversation died shortly after Igors last remarks, and he left Neil to catch up with the rest of the group. They were back on the bridge now, well on their way home. Neil scanned the skyline of the city in the dark as they walked. He pictured blooming clouds of fiery orange and gold and endless shimmering beads of anti-aircraft fire. The thought of undetectable Stealth bombers menacing above the clouds, exacting dazzling-light destruction across the concrete jungle was invigorating. He thought about the excitement and lawlessness of it all. He was so engulfed in his thoughts that the walk home seemed almost instant. Before he knew it, they were almost on
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the corner of Skadarska. The group stopped to part ways. Biljana and Igor were going to take the intersecting street home and the other three girls were taking a cab. They said their goodbyes, each girl kissing them on the cheeks and making Neil feel very uncomfortable. He looked at Igor to say goodbye. It was nice to meet you, Igor said as he extended his hand. Neil took it and shook firmly. Yes, you too, he replied. I know we will see you soon, said Igor. Yeah. Neil knew it would be a long summer and that they would definitely meet again. When the group had split up the four Americans began to walk down the street toward their flat. Guys, its only 2:30, said Lou. You wanna go down to the Optimist? Hell yeah, said Quentin. They passed the door to their building and made their way around the corner to the Optimist Club. It wasnt very crowded, and the minute the waiter sighted them he escorted them to one of the reserved tables underneath the tent on the sidewalk. They sat down. Hello Oliver, said Keith to the waiter. Hello, he replied. He didnt speak much English, but ordering four beers was easy enough. Within a few moments he had returned with four glasses of Weiferts. Quentin picked up his half-liter glass and raised it in the air for a toast. To Belgrade, he said. No, to Exile! said Neil. They all laughed and took a drink. Neil sipped through the layer of foam to the fine golden taste below. It was cold as it went down his throat. It was one of the finest beers hed ever tasted.
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curse of the cretaceous joe mills
curse of the cretaceous

joe mills
i tried to sit down and write something the other day (meaning right now) all i could think about were what some call pterodactyls they soared through my head swooping down and snatching all the ideas or all the good ones anyway and left me with this i am segregated or serrated like the back of a stegosaur and im not afraid to do it im just extinction-prone you can have your small pre-mammal rodents and ill take the t-rex even though hes destined to lose (at least hes destined for something)
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an elegy joe mills
an elegy
joe mills
i never realized how much walking i do with my littlest toe until i dropped a razor on it you really need that slice of skin on the knuckle he needs you he remembers he smears blood across the bathroom floor the tips of my fingers mourn for him and shed their shredded cuticles and beat their breasts douse themselves with the ashes of burnt leaves the ball of my foot throbs from correction compensation loss i remove my shoes whenever i can
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The Miracle of My Fathers Cock Virginia Chase Sutton
The Miracle of My Fathers Cock

is that now I remember it, great purple thing, tipped to satisfy me, which is why I'm on the psychiatric unit thirty-five years later. I desire my own death. What does a penis know, beyond little death, hugely red and sticky, endless? What does a dick care about suicide notes, drug overdoses or even the gun I think about buying. Too young. He's call and response, hands and mouth, how I love the shift of my legs, itchy nipples begging for a kiss. At the hospital, all this talk of medication but there isn't one yet that keeps my father away or deletes sex from my childhood brain, how I adore it, dirty and secret. My father's dead nearly four years, I've been in the hospital ten times, see my therapist three times a week, meaningless numbers. But that cock,
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The Miracle of My Fathers Cock Virginia Chase Sutton
that cock. Jumbo-size imprint, pulpy smack in my face, cry and stutter when he zips it away.
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What Brings You to Del Amo Hospital? Virginia Chase Sutton
What Brings You to Del Amo Hospital?

Saturday and Sunday afternoons stutter past; patients spend a few hours listening. This empty room, empty shelves, we don't get a daily paper. And our journey, well, it's not as if anyone could save us. What brings you to Del Amo? Steven's a part time therapist, working weekends, dead end shifts no one bids for. To keep busy, he provides the basic question. Distraction. No picking at angry sores marching up an ankle, or the crust beneath gauze bandages, though Debbie rewraps better than any aide. She was a nurse before the alters, all those traumatized pieces, the other voices and interior selves, pestered her twenty-four-seven. Does someone want to answer the question? Steven's a model of patience in khaki pants, muted golf shirt, black marker in hand, poised at the white board. My mother was a drunk Started passing out when I was eight: bed,
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couch, bathroom and kitchen floors. Dark urine spoiled the cushions, lapped the linoleum. A fleshy island, dead center in a yellow lake. * Who are you, Steven asks. The woman wraps a stuffed animal in a Winnie the Pooh baby blanket before she says I am Little Amy. Red snout and black floppy ears, her toy's a dog. I need Elizabeth, Steven says, caps the marker. She's not here, clutches the bundle high on her chest. I need an adult. This is no place for children. * Begin where you want to begin. He doesn't mean it. We're so weary of repetition: number of suicide attempts (methods used), mental health disorders (name them), depression (when did it begin), anonymous sex (were you in danger), blackouts and drugs (list addictions).Number of rapes, molestations (include all touch). Steven, how many kinds of abuse exist? Weekends cataloguing lists, someone please answer his persistent question, what brings you here? * I can always tell when my roommate becomes Mike, male swagger, demanding house cigarettes. Never mind that she doesn't smoke. Chainsmoking in the courtyard,
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he fiddles with the padlocks. It's easy to bust out, if I wanted to. I believe him. Yesterday he burned Lucy's cheek with a butt, then skipped out. She took his punishment. When Mike's out I refuse to sleep in our room. Kathy helps me drag my mattress down to the Quiet Room where the light's on all night. Makes sleeping tough but it bores Mike. He prefers to sleep alone. * The middle school band director squeezed my breasts, forced me to lie to the principal. When I stepped hard on his foot he made me look at the bruise, said what will I tell my mother? See what you did? Sometimes Heidi becomes Secret. It's in her voice, the way it swivels from her body, the way she jitters in her chair. So many children here. How to manage parts, pieces, alters, those named and unknown? The Fat Woman wants to kill me, Debbie says. And I don 't know why. We didn't do anything to her. Lucy's Miranda now, covering the walls with elaborate collages, pictures and words ripped from years of National Geographic, the only magazine here. One Sunday morning she shaped two figures
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from a pile of coffee stirrers, the large body bending to hold the little one's hand. The afternoon ends like all afternoons: the board's swiped, the last story vanishes, discarded, an old library book. Hasn't been off the shelf in years.
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Doors Virginia Chase Sutton
Doors

When it is exactly the way I remember, the doors slam upstairs, caught perhaps on a shift of wind from tall trembling trees outside. The breeze strokes past an open window, crinkly screens, then the flashing doors, their unexpected firing down the long hallway, every room and closet door like sex so sudden it is taken fully clothed. Against the wall, on the floor, beneath the dining room table, attire only slightly rearranged. Fast fuck, battered doors, my father's constant goddamnit Virginia, goddamnit. I still like it sharp as the wooden hairbrush against the naked thigh, one swift slap and I say this is how I want it. My father roamed the nighttime halls of my childhood back when I still called him daddy. Today an ex-one night stand writes I remember the smell of your sex. Provocative enough for instant readiness, caught on the furtive pizzazz of his cock, long ago sex
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Doors Virginia Chase Sutton
on his girlfriend's sofa. Your skin, he writes, still perfect, just like wet latex. Hear the slamming as one window frame shifts? Homemade curtains billow, shades roll and unroll, dizzy, old house going nuts. Take it again, no decision, agony of discovery and dust, the blind goddamnit banging.
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Sex Virginia Chase Sutton
Sex

How wrong, the word pleasure. Too simple, the way it slips out the pink and empty mouth. Imagine a clutch of rhinestones cobbled together for just the moment, held inside the web of my hands. See the very best jewelry I've collected? Oh yes, signed pieces: Weiss, Trifari, Schreiber, and the nameless gems, splendid turns of metal, splashy color, hearts and flowers, long glittering stems and blossoms, geometrics and the puzzle of desire. How they bend to hold light between their settings, intricate clasps. I remember standing on a bridge in Paris as it straddled the Seine. I should recall its name, no doubt important, but I cannot, could not pronounce it anyway. But I waited as twilight tumbled down the Eiffel Tower. It was an enormous spike of sparking light as the rest of the city grew damp beneath low lying clouds. Perhaps there is pleasure during high tea at the Phoenician, the dizziness of tea selections and nouveau riche trappings, white tablecloths, finger sandwiches of smoky ham and tiny crisp asparagus stalks, strawberries lathered in chocolate. Tarts, yes, something sour for the tongue. At the spa, naked beneath
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my white terry robe, naked again, spread over a heated table, tortured by his heavy fingers, better than any sex toy. A man's hot breath at the nape of my neck, sweat gathering, tiny dotted pearls creeping across my flesh. Press tattoo needles to the dip of my shoulder, spray of blue shooting stars and jolting little comets, new worlds, aren't they, mix of pain and vibrating intensity so beyond pleasure that the word does not exist. Fucking all night on a mattress on the floor, taking a breath while outside the hesitant snow pauses a moment before its inevitable melt, just as the broken sun rises behind rows of bare-lit trees. Sex is my religion, my therapist says. I want that to be wrong. There is no perfect divinity, only the mystic shifting in constant circles, searching for stupefaction and what may erupt the flesh beneath the knotted cord. No worship at the man's hands, the beloved's imperfect body. I do not say to the cock, you are my god, my god. I say: devour me. Clean sheets before sex and later, riddled with come and imprints of flesh. Not even good chocolate purchased at See's at a corporate discount or the tender liqueur leaking about my lips and the quick thrust down the back
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of my throat. How to name infinity, nipples and cunt staggering beyond the word? Sex is what I want. My body whispering, his hand, my hand, the cock and his mouth, skimming past sweetness, toodle-loo to desire, better than the knife tipped to my fine-skinned neck. Incandescence, illumination, transcendence. Of the body, for the body, only time this body is fully in the body. Yes, I say, this is how I want it. Can I get it, sin and secrets gobbled away? Say it right out loud? No matter. It's adoration, my body's constant thrumming, dangerously wet, and now, the drowning.
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Pheromone Cocktails and a Kangaroo Pugilist Michael Amundson

harlie slowly walked toward the blue house. It was one of those typical houses that looked like a monopoly house that had a front door and two small windows on either side. When he got to the door, he rocked back onto his heels, took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his hair (careful not to disturb the little strand that had slipped out from behind his ear [intentionally]), rubbed his eyes, straightened his shirt, caught his refection in the doors glass, thought he looked all right, cool even, reached up and pushed the dirty opaque button next to the door, (Sinatras Witchcraft came wafting out elevator style, Mr. Fillstone had been a huge Frank fan) Mrs. Fillstone answered the door. (In exactly 6.23 seconds.) Hello, come in, you must be the Charlie that Ive heard so much about from your mother. Yesyes I am. Jesus, Charlie could hear his mothers voice describing him to the old bag, He has a darling figure and he is very polite. He loves kids and stays away from drugs and alcohol. He will make a girl very happy one day. Would you like a soda, ask the Mrs. No thanks, I just had one on the way over here. Charlie had no idea why he had lied. For a brief second he started to wonder why people feel like they have to lie when offered something they dont want. It was not like this lady was going to keel over and die, just because he didnt want a fuckin' Tab. Mrs. Fillstone put her liver spotted hand on Charlies right shoulder, looked him in the eyes and said, Why dont you take a seat in the living room and Ill go get your date. She led Charlie
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into the room to one of those old antiquated couches that was mostly brown and had coarse fabric. Sitting on the thing was like sitting on a piece of concrete with just a little give to it. No wonder old people were always bitchin about their backs. Charlie sat there and the old bat hovered over him a little too close. Smiling down and not taking her eyes off of him, she yelled, oh, Kristy! She still hadnt blinked when she said to Charlie in a hushed voice, a left eye wink, and a tongue click, Shes downstairs getting ready. You know us girls, always having to look our best. Um, (nervous blush) yeah. Jesus this was just too fucking weird for him. She just stared at Charlie like he was an American G.I. about to liberate a young French girl from the grips of a Nazi foot soldier. After a few agonizing seconds she turned and headed towards the stairs, and right before she disappeared into the stair well, she turned her head so that she could look at Charlie one last time, smiled, and finally descended to the basement. Kristy, the grandma yelled. Her voice echoed and dissipated in the stairwell leaving nothing but the deliberated thuds of her feet on the stairs. Mrs. Fillstone reached the bedroom. Kristy, hes really cute. Really Grandma? Yes, he is. I just knew he would be. His mother is such a darling young lady. Oh good, I was hoping hed be cute, not that it would matter, its just nice thats all. Kristy was facing her Grandma in the outfit that she had picked out (last night around ten oclock she ripped through her closet and tried on 13 different outfits before finally deciding that she had nothing to wear so she might as well just throw on whatever she could find) for the blind date (that the old lady and the mother conspired at circle). Her still wet shower hair was
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straight brown and shoulder length and was soaking the back of her white sweater, making it almost transparent. So Grandma, Kristy spun slowly in place, how do I look? Lovely dear. Just lovely. But did you know that your sweater is all wet in back from your hair? Thats okay Grandma, itll dry. Well dear, I think its about time you go meet this fine young man. Ill stay down here so that you two can have your time. Thanks Grandma. Kristys smile broke through on her fair skin and she moved in to give her Grandma a hug. Have fun dear, Mrs. Fillstone squeezed Kristy. Be careful, and if you need anything dont hesitate to call and call us when you know whats going on. The two broke off their hug and held each others hands and exchanged smiles. I will Grandma. I love you. I love you too dear. With that, Kristy walked out of her bedroom (and into the relatively long wood paneled hallway), past the bathroom, past the picture of her mother as a child (in sandy brown braids, a red plaid dress, holding a sunflower in her little right hand) , past the picture of her uncle Marvs high school football team (they went 2 and 7 that year, he went on to become a dentist and got caught banging the receptionist), past the painting of a morose Jesus (his story is well documented) , past the door to the pantry that held all the canned goods that her Grandma has made over the years (enough cans of fruit and vegetables that would literally sustain a family of five light eaters for seven months and nineteen days), and into the rec room part of the basement where she continued past the pool table (where she had her first kiss with her cousin Jeff s best friend Ryan, the summer of her twelfth year), and past the dehumidifier, before she finally reached the bottom of the
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stairs. But before she started up the stairs, she looked up at the door (which is very metaphorical if you think about it, because every time that someone is contemplating the unknown, they seem to look upor maybe thats just me), took a deep breath and put her first foot forward (it was her right) to what she thought would be a very pleasant date with a very pleasant boy. All this time Charlie had nothing to do. There was not a magazine in sight, not a radio within range, not a T.V. to stare at. He had nothing. All there was was a bunch of old family pictures on the wall, seven antiquated books (none worth mentioning) on a shelf, and the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and his of nerves. (When he left his house, they were simply a small little man on the very distant horizon of his disposition [you could barely see that he was waving his nervous little arms], but as Charlie got closer to Kristys, the little man started to run from the horizon and towards the front porch of his consciousness, and this was no little man after all he was one big bastard of nerves.) I mean what was this broad going to look like? He knew what she sounded like; Charlie had heard her over the phone and she sounded like she was crying, or about to. That was just over an hour ago (one hour and twenty seven minutes ago) and he thought she sounded like one of those broads who was always catching a cold or some other god damn disease that had to be treated with Vicks vapor rub, boxes of Puffs and probably vagina cream Charlie heard small steps making their way deliberately up the stairs. He was keen enough to know that these were the steps of someone pacing themselves, not hustling into the unknown. Charlie stood up, wiped his sweaty palms along the out seam of his pants, straightened his hair (once again being careful not to mess with the bundle that coolly covered his face) coughed into his right hand, and again wiped his hands along the side of his pants, grabbed his right wrist behind his back, rocked back onto
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his heels, and looked to the threshold of the door, to see what in store for him tonight. When Kristy emerged from the doorway, Charlie rocked back onto the balls of his feet. Hello. You must be Charlie, Kristy smiled. Kristy was hot. (Charlie squeezed his wrist in a sigh of relief.) She was about four inches shorter than him which would put her about 58. She had on a ribbed pink tank that lay nicely over her full breasts and semi-soft stomach. When I say semisoft I mean it in the loosest sense of the word. When I say loosest I mean it in the clich way, you know the, hey man, she is every which way but loose. Hell, I dont know what Im saying, I guess what Im saying is that that she has nice tits and a great assGood lord! How dare you talk like that! Like what? Like shes some piece of fruit for some man to taste. Shes not? You are a pathetic little worm. Guys like you are the reason why men have such a bad reputation. Yeah? Is that so? Well lady, chicks like you are the reason men have to suffer with blue balls. Blue what? You are probably the most disgusting man that Ive ever come across. Came across a lot of men in your day huh? Would you shut up so we can get back to our couple. Fine with me. Yep, and you must be Kristy. Charlie was handsome. His jaw line-length brown hair was a little wavy and combed behind his ears. (Except for his coolwell you know.) He was a tall boy with broad shoulders, a thin athletic physique and the most beautiful blue eyes. They were like the sky, like something that the story book princesses would see in their prince. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans but he got away with it. He looked clean cut and comfortable. Kristy walked towards Charlie with her right arm extended
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which relieved him because he didnt know whether or not he had to hug her. Charlie took her right into his right and covered them both with his left. Kristy thought that was very sweet. They shook hands in the amount of time that society deemed comfortable, and slowly released them. With hands at their sides and their gaze on the floor, Kristy looked up and said, Well, should we get going? Sure, said Charlie, Or as the French say, surebut only in French. What, Kristy replied with a smile and a sideways glance. Nothing, I was just trying to be funny. Lets go. Okay, just let me get my purse. Kristy walked off into the kitchen and left Charlie by the door. I know its here somewhere, she said, her voice (that sounded much better in person than it did over the phone, much sweeter) bounced around the olive green linoleum floor and the olive green Amana refrigerator. No problem, said Charlie. Jesus Christ here we go, a typical woman typically looking for something that she has misplaced. If it is not one thing its some other god damn thing. She will probably find a way to lock Charlies keys in his car tonight. Would you be quiet. Just because she cant find her purse right away you dont have to go off and throw a tiff. A girl needs her purse, just like you need your bad attitude and your loud music. If a girl needs her purse so bad, then why does she always lose the damn thing? She doesnt always lose it, sheFound it, Kristy said as she appeared from the kitchen holding a tiny little bag. What the hell could possibly fit in that? It is not like she can carry anything practical in that thing. It wouldnt even qualify as a fuckin coin
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purse in most European countries. Its an accessory. It is more for looks than for practicality. Its more like an asinine-ory. No wonder why she lost the damn thing. You and your bad attitude... Let the girl be. Good, said Charlie, lets get going. They stepped out into the warm summer night. The frogs were croaking, the sky was pastels, the breeze non-existent, and Charlies car was hip in that too cool to care style. He opened up the door for Kristy and she sat down on the pseudo-velvety blue cloth seats. Charlie got in and started the engine and jet setted out the gravel driveway. So, what do you want to do? Charlie asked. I am up for anything. And besides, youre the boy, you should have it all planned out, said Kristy with a huge marketable grin. Old fashioned are we? Not old fashion I dont know, I just like it when the boy plans the stuff. Okay, I thought we could go to that little bar on Long Lake, The Galaxy, have you heard of it? Yeah, Ive heard it was nice. Yeah, its cool. Theyve got a deck right on the lake and pool tables and a cool jukebox. Sounds good to me, said Kristy with a shrug. Charlie thought this was going to be all right. He would be out with a girl for a change, and a hot one on top of it. And if all goes well tonight, that wont be the only time hes on top of something. My God! Can you please get your mind out of the gutter, for god sakes they just met. I was just kidding...sort of. Charlie was hoping that some of his boys would show up so they could see him out with the top shelf goods and be envi74
ous of lil ol Chuck. Wait, in fact, maybe Star Lake wasnt such a great idea. Maybe we should go to The Index on Ottertail Lake, theyve got better food and it wont be so crowded. Theyve got a pool table. Yeah whatever, Im up for anything. Kristy had a good first impression of the boy. He seemed like he truly thought of her first. I mean, what boy would actually decide to go someplace else because he thought the food was better. That is definitely a plus. Do you mind if I turn on the radio? asked Charlie. No, not at all, I love music. If you want to you can pick out a CD. My CDs are in the black case in the back seat. Sure. Kristy was once again impressed; he was letting her pick out the music. What a thoughtful boy, or then again... She turned her body and reached over into the back seat. The seat belt divided her breasts creating two independent mounds of flesh. They were pushing against her pink tank top and her nipples were erect (or in the teenage boy vernacular, she was nippin out). Charlie masked the fact that he was sneaking peaks by pretending that he was a very attentive driver and was just checking the passenger side mirror. You men and your sex, sex, sex. Are they under this cream polo shirt? Yeah, they must be. Charlie got a little red in the face (he wants to be seen as one of those cats who is cool in that non-conformist way [hence the T-shirt and jeans {the T-shirt was solid navy blue}] which inevitably makes you reject all things brand name) and subtly shook his head and under his breath let out a shit. He couldnt believe that he almost let his mother talk him into wearing that thing. Here I got em. Kristy pulled herself back, straight75
ened her skirt and began flipping thru the CDs. Charlie was going to see just what kind of broad this chick was. This was going to be his litmus test. She might be a big ball of acid and grab a shitty CD. Then again, she might be the neutralizing base and grab herself a winner, and some respect from Charlie. She decided on one and put it in without looking at Charlie or letting him see what the CD was. That was because she knew how you boys work. She knew that she was going to be judged what kind of person she was just by what kind of music she chose. You men are so predictably shallow. Well look, with all the shit out there like that French Canadian chick and her fucked up face, you can never be too careful. I mean who wants to get stuck with a Rush fan? Oh shut up. Whatever, music is important. (Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, came pouring out of the speakers. The reluctant brass and the sandy drums along with the piano was the perfect music for the already set sun and the atmosphere of a first date.) Im impressed Miles Davis. I love this album. My dad used to always listen to this record when I was little I havent heard it in so long. It really brings me back, Kristy stared out the front of the car to the tree line in the foreground and the clouds in the back. Her green eyes seemed to (for some reason) compliment the whole mood of the car. Charlie wondered if it was true that there are more bald women than women with green eyes. You have very pretty eyes. Charlie just blurted it out before he even knew what he had said. Before she could answer him he quickly shoveled out, Im sorry, that probably sounded like a line, like something that youve heard a thousand times before, but He quit talking before he made an even bigger ass of himself and once again subtly shook his head and swore (qui76
etly). Kristy looked over at Charlie and he pretended not to notice. (This would be the part of the movie where the girl would slowly move her hand towards his until she had his covered, but this aint the movies so her hand wasnt going anywhere.) She smiled and said, No Charlie, it was very sweet, and I havent heard it a thousand times before. Oh my, this boy was something out of the ordinary. He had said that so so self consciously, so honestly that it struck the perfect note on Kristys emotional xylophone and it harmonized perfectly with her first impression. She was going to like this boy. So Kristy, is that short for Kristina? Charlie had to break the silence that was uncomfortable for him and perfectly fine for the broad. Yeah, but I hate that name. Ive always gone by Kristy. How bout you, is your name really Charles? Nope, just Charlie. Does anybody ever call you Chuck? No, not really, sometimes my buddies call me that but I think it sucks. I would rather be called anything other than Chuck. Anything? Kristy smiled. Well I suppose not anything; I wouldnt want to be called shithead or anything like that.Charlie relaxed and smiled, almost forgetting about his clich-crack-pick-up line. There, finally Charlie swore, he is starting to be himself. You dont have to swear to be yourself, why are you men always cursing. Because. Because why? Because thats just the way it fucking is, all right. I just knew you were going to do that. Do what? Swear when I asked you because why. Well come on, anybody would have done it, you left the
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door wide open. In fact I am starting to feel a little embarrassed that I hit such an easy target. I consider myself a more able comedian than thatJesus youre a prude. Im not a prude. I just happen to respect good manners thats all. And do you even know what prude means? Yes I do, it means you. No really, do you know what it means? What, dont you know what it means? I know what it means, but I dont think you do. It means someone who is doesnt like shit, someone whos conservative. The republicans, theyre prudes. Oh god, please dont start on the republicans now, Im not in the mood. Besides were missing all the action here. (This is where I [if I were an unimaginative hack] would flash back to the car and we would just catch the punch line of a joke that Charlie was telling. Like, Rectum? Damn near killed em, and then Charlie and Kristy would break into hysterical laughter leaving us to wonder what the beginning of the joke was.) and that is why I hate the French, said Charlie. Wow Charlie, thats one heck of a story. (I just couldnt resist.) See now look what you have done. All your swearing has lead us to miss what they were talking about. Its no big deal; Ive heard the story a thousand times. Well, what is it? Im not telling. Fine, be that way you big baby. Bite me. Whatever, lets just get back to our lovely little couple. Charlie was diggin this girl. She was funny (meaning that she laughed at all of Charlies jokes), smart, hot and innocent. Charlie really dug those virginal type girls. He didnt like damaged goods.
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What on earth are you talking aboutdamaged goods, I have never! Relax lady. Dont you tell me to relax, IWould you just shut the Fuck up! . Oh Jesus, please dont cry. Im sorry. I didnt mean to yell at you I had no right to yell at you.please stop crying now. Can we please just get back to the story. (Sniff.) Yes we can, and I am sorry for making you cry. Thats all right. Okay where were weoh yes, Charlie just got done telling a story that we missed for some reason and now they are just about to pull into the restaurant. I hope you like pizza, Charlie asked. Are you kidding me? Who doesnt like pizza? Thats true, said Charlie, who doesnt like pizza? They stepped out of that charming little blue car and went into the bar/grill/Mexican restaurant (that makes pizza) and were absolutely blown away by the volume of the music. The shit was just cranked. And if I am not mistaken, that was The Who playing. Charlie loved The Who (or at least told everyone he did). They sliced their way through the audio fog and found a booth. (This was not tough because they were the only ones in the place.) Facing each other across the red and white checkered table cloth, Charlie kind of half yelled, I love The Who. Kristy, having no idea what he had just said, just smiled her pretty little smile, put her elbows on the table, and rested her chin in her supple hands. Daultry just screamed on about searching low and high. Finally the bonehead cook/manager saw that there was someone in the place and yelled at the waiter/bartender to turn the fuckin shit down. Sorry bout that folks, didnt see you there, said the waiter/bartender. His denim shirt embroidered with his name TRENT.
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No problem/thats okay, said Charlie and Kristy simultaneously. Their voices wove together, and tangled in a metaphorical embrace that was depicting what their bodies were going to look like in the backseat of Charlies ride at about 1:30 a.m. Or at least that what was what Charlie was hoping for. How do you know that was what Charlie was hoping for? Maybe he just wants to get to know her and hopefully build a meaning relationship with her. How do I know? Because Charlies my boy. (In the buddy sense, not in the father/son sense. You know like, you just tell him that I sent you and that youre my boy, and theyll take care of you. No wait. That was a bad example, Its more like, yeah I know him, hes one of my best friendshes my boy. Hell just say boy the way that one of the hip hop kings would... Boyeee!) And if theres one thing I know, its my boys. Maybe you dont know Charlie as well as you think. Maybe you talk too much lady. Have you ever thought of that? Maybe we should just get back to our little couple and let them be the focus of attention. Good idea. So Charlie, what do you do? Kristy said while still staring at the menu. What do you mean? Like what do I do for fun? Or what do I do to make my life seem worth while, like school or a job or.... I mean what do you do? Do you go to school, do you have a job, do you like to dance, I dont know, likewhat dya do? They looked at each other for a fraction of a second before they broke off the gaze. Charlie looked out the window, and Kristy looked back onto the menu. Well I went to school at a little private school in Wisconsin but I got sick of that and needed to take a little time off. Now I just spend a lot of time hanging out with my buddies that are still
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in town, and we basically do nothing. Well you have to do something? No, not really. We spend a lot of time just hanging out and talking about the same ol shit. Charlie let out a sigh (not one of those deep sighs that come bellowing out of Thorazine drones, the kind of sigh that was designed to signify the truth, it was almost as if he realized, at that very moment, that him and his friends really and truly did not do shit.) Kristy let loose a long, drawn out hum, (If inflection could be drawn, the hum would be slanted with questioning, a kind of hum that starts high and slides its way down towards the bottom of the pitch pipe. Like, MMMMMMMMM mmmmmm mmmmm, what have we got here?) furrowed her brow, and bit her index finger in mock contemplation as she looked up at Charlie. After they both thought about it, and subsequently talked it out, they decided on a pizza and told Trent to bring them a large, with tomatoes, mushrooms, black and green olives, artichoke hearts and extra cheese. Whether or not either of them would admit it, there was a deliberate or at the very least sub-conscious choice not to order onions. Charlie got a Coors light in a bottle, and Kristy got a Sprite, with a lemon, please. So Kristy, what do you do? And I mean that in the general, slash, universal sense. She shot back at him with a coy, sarcastic, Ha, Ha. No but seriously what do you do for fun, for a job, for life? Well not much really. I go to the U, and other than that I dont do much. I like to read and my friends and I go to movies and sometimes out dancing or something. What are you majoring in? Elementary Ed. Charlie Nodded his head in agreement and was about to ask her a follow up when the drinks came. He took a long pull of his beer and actually felt a little self conscious
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about drinking too much of it. He did not want to give her the impression that he was a booze hound and that she was in for a long drunken, drooling, slurring, sexually harassing night. He was sure that was the last thing this chick needed. Finally he asked, Elementary ed? What made you decide on that? Oh, I dont know, I guess Ive always liked kids and it just seemed like the thing for me. Besides, I really cant see myself doing anything else. Well, thats nice; it sounds like things are moving right along for you. Yeah, Kristy replied softly. She looked across the empty restaurant, taking in all the neon beer signs and promotional Tshirts on the wall. (With that the conversation slowed. Not that they were by any means getting sick of each other or running out of shit to say. Its just that within the natural ebb and flow of a conversation, theirs happened to be at low tide). They were both focusing on far points of the restaurant when Charlie finally broke the silence by asking if she wanted to shoot some pool. I would love to. My Grandma has a pool table but I am not very good. Thats fi- Jesus, this is getting ridiculous. I am not going to sit here any longer if all there going to do is nothing. I mean shit, I would rather get my head kicked in than sit here through this shit. Well then dont sit here. Leave. You wont hurt my feelings. (Again) Im not going to leave, but if the only thing that is going to happen is these two not knowing what to say, then what the fuck? Dont worry, something has to happen, why else would we be here? You wanna break? Charlie asked while handing her the cue. Sure. Kristy took the cue from Charlie and walked
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around the table and got herself into positionaimedand Crack! Jesus Christ that girl is a Shark! Holy Shit! Charlie said it a little too loud. Kristys face was in full blush by the time the third ball was only halfway down the internal tunnel of the pool table. You never told me that your dad was Minnesota Fats. Oh be quiet. Im not that good. I just got lucky, thats all. Lucky? I dont think so. I think youre trying to hustle me. Hustle? Me? Noooo. Kristy had a smile on her that you usually only see on grifters and politicians. (Yes I know thats redundant but it is for literary purposes.) Seven ball in the corner pocket. So Kristy, why are you staying with your Grandma? Charlie took another pull from his beer. (This time a small one.) Well, my grandpa died this winter and I thought she could use some company around the house. Sorry to hear that. Was he sick? Yeah, cancer. He was sick for a long time so I guess it was for the best that he passed on. At least hes done suffering now. Three ball, corner. Still its never easy when someone you love dies. Charlie took another swig, put the beer down, and looked at Kristy trying for her next shot. He could tell that she was not ready to talk about this stuff with him so he decided to leave it at that. So do you and your Grandma have fun? Yeah, we have a great tim- Oh shoot, I missed it. Your shot. She walked around the table and gave Charlie the cue. He was sure that she intentionally brushed her fingers along his. All right Chuck! Oh shut up. Charlie scouted out a shot, extended the his left hand on the table and laid the stick in the soft pit between his thumb and
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pointer finger, pulled the cue back with his right and poised his body for the release. Synapses were at the edge of their seat in anticipation muscles were taunt ready to explode his eyes were unblinking his- Charlie stood up and looked over to Kristy (the green eyed bombshell) and said matter of factly, but without malice, Before I shoot this there is something that you should know about me. I am not one of those guys who falls for the coy antics of girls, and I dont pretend I know how to play pool just to impress some girl. With that, Charlie got back into the position that he had seen Newman in in The Hustler, shotand missed. Kristy just sat there and looked at him. A vague, tiny little smile may have been on her mouth. She had no idea what to think of this kid and his straight shootin honesty. She couldnt tell whetIll tell you what she thought of him, she thought it was one of the sweetest things that she had ever heard. She knew at that very moment that this boy (in the little girl, little boy sense) was different from all the poo poopee pee boys that she had meet at the University. They were into haircuts, nice clothes and themselves. But this Charlie boy seemed like he was different. He seems honest, friendly, sweetAnd a hellcat in the sack. Would you be quiet?! Are you ever going to let me finish a thought? Or areNoIm going to interrupt you. Ohhhugh! Come on, that was funny, you gotta admit that. That was not funny. How can you sit there and say that that was not funny? I mean, there are probably only a handful of people in the world who are that quick. Me, a couple of comedians and maybe, maybe, one of those Buddhist monks who has been meditating on some mountain in Tibet for the last thirty years and is completely in tune with his mind, body and soul.
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So now youre saying that you are a monk? No, I was just using the monk to illustrate my god damn pointYou dont get a lot of things do you? I get a lot of things just fine. Yeah sure. Everything except jokes, politics and human interaction. Oh shut up! Oh, no! I knocked the eight ball in. Kristy said as she pouted her lower lip and started to fake cry. I guess that means I win. That means its official; I have never lost to you in pool. I would like to take this moment to retire, undefeated, champion pool player. Charlie smiled and finished off his beer with one big gulp. He was no longer on edge. He was comfortable being around Kristy, and comfortable around himself for the first time in a long time. Things were going good. They had a good game of grab butt going, and Jesus, was she hot. Hey look, our food is here, said Charlie. They started to make their way back to the table. Im gonna a get a soda from Trent, do you want another Sprite? Yes, please. And dont forget the lemon there, champ. Charlie turned around and faced her and locked his hands, raised them above his head, and shook them as if had just won the sprints at the original Olympics in Greece. He stopped his gloating and headed up to the bar. While he was standing there waiting for Trent his friend, Stevie, walked in. Stevie, what the hell are you doing here? Well nice to see you too man. Stevie replied. He was wearing that stupid fuckin Gas Huffer shirt that he thinks is so cool. For Christ sakes, the fuckin thing was pea green and soiled with party, B.O. and knowing Stevie, semen. His straight, blonde, greased hair was pulled back into a ponytail and the five oclock shadow was casting a gold tint over his honkey skin. (A marine
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drill sergeant would squeeze out through neck veins and bloodshot eyes, Youlooklikeafuckingbumprivated! and a surfer kid and/ or skater punk and/or a pseudohippie following some wanna be Grateful Dead would draw out a, Duuuude.) No, I didnt mean it that way. I meant what are you doing here? Charlie pointed at the ground with both hands for emphasis. I thought you guys would be at the Galaxy? Charlie felt a very small, tiny little veil of nervousness cascade over him. He sure as fuck didnt want his boys coming in here and fuckin it all up for him. Naw man, Im on my way to Liskos cabin. Hes havin a party out there. I just stopped by here for a take out menu. What about you man? I thought you had that big date tonight. Yeah, I do, Im on it right now. Stevie stepped to the side and peered over Charlies shoulder, Well, where the hell is she? Shes at the table, Charlie threw his right thumb over his shoulder pointing in her general direction. Im up here getting drinks. Well is she hot? Stevies little slit of a mouth twisted and crept into a little sneaky fuckin smile. Shut the fuck up Stevie. Can you be an adult for just five minutes in your fucking life? Hey fuckin whatever, man. Stevie held up his hands. You should bring her out to Liskos, it should be a great time, there is going to be a shitload of people there. (Charlie has reached yet another crossroads in his life. It was not a big one, like trying to figure out if he wanted to drop out of college or not; it was a little one, and he had to figure out if having his friends see this chick he was with was greater than the time alone he could spend with her. Then again, it would be nice to see her in a social situation, and she was gonna have to eventually meet his friends.) Yeah, you know what, maybe we will show up.
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Cool man, I hope to see you there. Stevie grabbed the menu from the wall and started to walk out. Hey, Stevie. Charlie, looked over his right shoulder, cupped his hands over his mouth and whispered loud enough for him to hear him. Shes hot. Alllll Right. Stevie surfer vernaculared. With a thumbs up, he walked out the door. Charlie got the drinks and headed back to Kristy and the pie. What took you so long? Oh, a friend of mine came in and I chatted with him a little. He said there was a party going on down the road at a friend of ours. If you want, we could go to that after were done eating? Charlie didnt what she would think of this idea. Yeah that would be fun, Kristy said happily and honestly Christ. Charlie didnt think she would be that easy going about it. There was not a hint of apprehension. Thats because she is a confidant young woman. Yeah, whatever, its still weird. Its not weird, its healthy. Its healthy to want to go rage with a bunch of dudes? No, its healthy to be a confidant girl. You mean promiscuous girl. No, you pig, I mean healthy. Kristy took her third and final piece from the pizza pan. She and her fork were just about to cut into the piece when her mind and curiosity got the best of her, If you could be any animal, what would you be? Charlie (with a mouth full of masticated chow) raised his eye brows, swallowed and coughed out, What? I saidwhat kind of animal would you be if- No I heard you, I justwhere the hell did that come from? What do you mean? Thats a good question. Kristy sat
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back into the chair and pulled her shoulders back, her breasts pushed forward as her back muscles stretched and relaxed. Charlie tried hard to look her in the eyes. He tried real hard. But somehow he kept slipping his gaze down onto those protruding love muffins. Charlie was getting a good feeling; she obviously was doing this to get his attention. Would you shut up?! The girl had to stretch her back; she is not consciously trying to exploit herself. I am sure you men could see an innuendo in a sneeze. Look lady I know what I saw and what I saw was that broad putting the moves on my boy. Whatever. Well, (Charlie after much thought) I guess I would be some kind of bird, maybe an eagle, those amazing eyes and the ability to fly would be just fine by me. How bout you? What would you be? I would want to be a horse... personally. Kristy shrugged her shoulders and smiled. I mean they are so beautiful, smart and so graceful. I mean, they can run super fast and still make it look easy. Plus they are very good at, um theyre trusting, and right when you come up to them, they can tell whether youre nice or not. Have you ever ridden a horse Kristy? Yes, of course I have. Why... have you? Nope, never been on one. I have ridden an elephant and watched a Kangaroo box a guy before but I have never ridden a horse. Charlie took another bite of his slice and sat back to chew it (with his mouth closed). You saw a guy box a Kangaroo? I always thought that that was made up. Nope, its real. I saw it with my own eyes when I was a little kid. Even at that young of an age, I thought it was twisted and bizarre. It was this small little traveling carnival that was right by my hometown. The guy was wearing this old, soiled wife beater
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and was wearing these giant red boxing gloves. I remember him being this gray-haired guy whose hair was always falling in front of his eyes. The kangaroo was also wearing gloves and just sort of jumped and flayed around wildly. He was pure instinct Charlie moved his head slightly towards the ceiling. (His eyes were glazed with that gaze, you know, the one that people get when they are tapping into a turning point. I dont want to say anything as heavy as it was traumatic, but it definitely had made a mark on Charlie.) That god damn Kangaroo just sat there inside that boxing ring, fighting for its life against some old carnie who was just out trying to make a buck. I remember that ol Kangaroo really let that son of a bitch have it; I mean, he really unloaded on the guy and the crowd went nuts, just screaming their heads off In retrospect, Im pretty sure they werent yelling because it was poetic justice, but nonetheless that Kangaroo was winning one over for the animal kingdom by proxy God damn that was a weird day. Charlie rubbed his face with the palms of his hands and Kristy just sat there. She was sitting there because that young man just opened up to her and she was respecting the moment. Yeah? Well, it would be nice for her to say something; Charlie is starting to feel like an idiot, like maybe this broad doesnt get him or something. She gets him just fine. Thats the point. She saw who he really was right there; she saw that this boy was filled with something different; he was sensitiveat least more than other boys that she knew. Well, thats fine lady. Im glad she thinks our Chas here is some kind of saint, but it is still wrong for her to leave him out in the wind like this. Shes notKristy looked down at her plate and softly said, Wow Charlie, that must have been a pretty weird day Do you still think that they let people box those things?
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I sure hope not. A silence came caressing over them. In the background the two Knucklehead employees were fuckin around with wet towels, and Kristy and Charlie just sat there, listening to them and the out of date and out of place music coming from the jukebox. (It was Journey with their pussy front man and all their soulless, bullshit music. You would have thought that this was 85 with its Reaganomics, short-shorts, feathered mullets and its, give me a breaks.) Right then that idiot Trent came over and asked them, You need anything else here folks? This dipshit had about as much tact as a mother fucker. He had no respect for the moment between two people. This is the last guy you would have sent over to the UN during the Bay of Pigs scandal. We would have been nothing but a charred out sterilized ash hole of a world. Do you need anything Kristy? Charlie looked at her (in the eyes). No thank you Charlie. No, I dont think so man; I guess well just take the check. Charlie took a wad of money out of his pocket and uncrumpled a couple of tens and a twenty. He saw that Kristy had start sifting through her tiny purse for money. Ill get this. You dont have to Charlie, I have money. Im sure you do, but dont worry about it. Well thank you Charlie, thats sweet. Youre welcome Kristy. She knew that she didnt have to pay, so why did she even bother reaching for her cash? Because its the thought that counts. She doesnt want Charlie to think that she was not willing, even though it is the boys job to pay. You women and your contradictions; youre always bitching
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about equal rights until it comes to the money. And if someone doesnt open the door for you, you about have a god damn heart attack, squealing that chivalry is dead. We dont need equality in manners, we need equality when it comes to respect. Yeah? Respect? Well wed respect you more if you started to take more responsibility. It wouldnt kill you to change a tire every once in awhile, or god forbid, youre the one who runs out in the rain to pull the car around. You cant be serious. Do you honestly think that the only way for a woman to get respect is to get her hands dirty or get wet? Hey, I have nothing against a woman getting wet. What?.Oh my god, you pig! You asked for it. I never did such a thing. You should take some lessons from Charlie on how to be a man. There is nothing that kid could teach me. Im a god damn sexual Jesus. Im impressed; you just managed to be sacrilegious and sexist in the same sentence. Thank you. So how much tip should I leave on a seventeen dollar bill? Charlie stood and fingered through the money lying on the table. I dont say that because I want you to know how much money I spent on you. I say that because Im horrible at math, and my buddies are always bitching at me for tipping too much. Charlie looked up at the girl. I know you werent trying to rub it in my face Charlielets see. Kristy started to mumble to herself. Her full lips were pounding unseen numbers and she closed her eyes to really maximize her math skill. Three dollars and forty cents would be twenty percent. Do you think, The Trent, (Charlie raised his hands to
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make the quote signs with his fingers) deserves that much? Yeah, he was nice enough. Yeah, he was finethree fifty it is. Charlie dug into his pocket and flipped two quarters onto the table. (They both landed heads up.) Well Kristy, what do ya say? Lets get the hell outta here. Sounds like a plan Stan. No Kristy, my names Charlie. Oh you. Kristy let out a little giggle and flipped her hand at Charlie (in an oh-so-girlie way). Charlie just kinda stood back and watched Kristy turn and start to walk out. He wasnt looking at her ass. He was just looking at a girl who was alright. This is just what the doctor had ordered for Charlie. Wow, Im impressed that you didnt focus on her body. I said Charlie wasnt looking at her ass, I didnt say anything about me. Good lord. Youre an idiot. Kristy slowed and turned around and started to walk backwards looking at Charlie. Well are you coming? Yeah Im coming. You hear that? My boy said he was cuOh shut up! Charlie caught up with Kristy and held the door for her. The night was still warm and could be described as muggy. The moon was starting to make an appearance, and Charlie had the Stones Tumbling Dice rolling through his minds ear. He started to swagger a bit, and opened the door of that kick ass light blue LTD. Thanks Charlie. Youre welcome Kristy. Charlie shut the door for her once she was securely inside and started to walk around the back of the car, looking at Kristy through the back window. He was waiting to see if she would reach over and unlock his door for him. Charlie was behind the car when he saw the silhouette reach
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over. (Charlie had seen that in some movie with DeNiro. Some guy said that was the way you knew you had a good one, if they opened the door for you. Charlie gets all his shit from the movies.) Charlie got in, put the keys in the ignition, (but didnt start it) and turned to face Kristy. So now what? I dont care. Do you want to go to that party? Yeah thatd be just fine by me. I have to warn you, my friends are a bunch of flaming idiots. Im sure theyre not that bad. Kristy pulled out her seat belt and the metallic click of the locking mechanism seemed unusually loud. It resonated through the whole car. No, theyre bad. Theyre sweethearts, but theyre bad. Charlie straightened himself and turned the car on. Her motor hummed, her stereo played, and he rolled her windows down so the air coming off the lake would wash the pizza parlor funk from their hair. A little on down the line Charlie spoke up, So I hope you dont mind, there will be a lot of drunk people there. No. Jeez Charlie, what do you think, that Im some kind of prude, that Ive never had a beer before or been to a party? Kristy smiled her little smile, I do go to college, you know. Yeah, I know, I just didnt know if you were into that whole scene. Dont worry Charlie, Ill do just fine. Kristy slid her hand across the seat, the friction just slightly warming her palm and gently patted the back of Charlies hand. Sounds like your girl is into to getting shitfaced. Not to mention she just put the moves on my man there. Shes not into getting um-faced (blush), and no, she wasnt putting the moves on him. She was simply showing affection, thats what humans do. Yeah, humans that want to get laid.Did you hear me? I
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said humans that want to get laid. I heard you, Im just ignoring you. You cant ignore me forever. Sooner or later youll speak up. Especially in about an hour and a half when that girl will be taking her shirt off. . You want me to roll the windows up? No. This air feels nice Isnt the moon pretty tonight? Kristy had her arm out the window and was flying it at the 35 mph speed limit dictated by law. The air flowed above and below her hand and wrist, and her little fine arm hair was blown back against her skin. (Tickling her in a thousand little places and sending shivers up her peripheral nervous system to that part of the brain that processes the tactile. That must be the best place to work in the brain.) The hair around Kristys face danced and softly whipped. She stuck her head a little farther out the window and closed her eyes. The white noise wind swooshed by her ears, and the Doppler Effect the passing mailbox had on the breeze created a natural rhythm that tranced and soothed Kristy into that place that pot heads, small children and dogs seem to be. (You know that place; I believe they call it nirvana in the east and trippy in the west.) After about thirty seconds, (33.74 to be exact) Kristy pulled her head back into the window, looked at Charlie and said matter of factly, You know Charlie, Im having really nice time tonight. So am I, Kristyso am I. Charlie broke into a smile and the green indigo glow of the dashboard washed his face and teeth in a subtle, electronic hue. The tenths of a mile and the miles rolled on by, and they both just sat back in silence and enjoyed the night, the music, the breeze and each others company. (But not necessarily in that order.) There was seven minutes (seven minutes and twentnevermind) of unspoken conversations
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So Kristy Charlie finally broke the silence. He didnt know why, he just felt like he should say something. Whats your favorite kind of music? Kristy opened her eyes and the smile that was softly forming her lips slipped out the back door and into the shadows. What? You know ah, whats your favorite kind of music? Charlie knew right away that he just had totally disrespected the moment. He took something as perfectly intangible as comfortable silence and shattered it with his stupid trivial question. He was just as bad as that Trent fuck back at the pizza joint. Kristy turned her head to the left and let it rest on her shoulder. She studied Charlie for a moment, (I mean really looked at him, just to see what the hell he was getting at. The waves of recognition rolled onto her beach of comprehension and moved the sand around to reveal a mosaic of his regret and embarrassment. She knew that Charlie didnt mean to ask it, or even that he wanted an answer. She knew that he simply asked it for her sake. He wanted her to know that he was not avoiding her, that he was not uncomfortable. He simply asked it for her, and that, she found, was the perfect kind of sweet.) rolled her head back straight, closed her eyes again and softly said, I dont know Charlie I dont know. Charlie took a slow, deep, quiet inhale through his nose and blew a smile onto his face in the aqua marine electric evening. The hearts pumped, the blood flowed, the hemoglobin carried the oxygen molecules, the optic nerve received, the cochlea converted, the semi circular canal stabilized, and the id lied in thick anticipation. Charlie slowed the baby blue ride and put her turn signal on. They were taking a left towards the east, towards the lake, towards the cabin, and to the party. You know, its not too late turn back, We dont have to go if you dont want to. No I think it will be fun, Besides it will be nice to meet
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your friends. They drove down the narrow wooded path towards the cabin. The headlights illuminated the trees on either side of the love car. When they broke through into the clearing, they saw a small white cabin with chipping white paint and a screened in porch that faced the lake. Down by the water there were six or seven people standing a circular brick fire pit. The flames were reflecting and dancing on the still water, and the dark silhouetted figures were deftly smeared with an amber orange hue. Charlie parked the car, turned it off, looked at Kristy and said, Well, were here. Now dont say I didnt warn you when you realize everyone here is an idiot. Jeez Charlie, Kristy said while opening her door. She got out, and finished her thought over the dirty white vinyl top of the car. You must really hate your friends. All you have been doing is talking about how annoying they are. Jesus would you keep it down, Charlie hushed and, looked over his shoulder to see if anyone had heard her. I dont think theyre annoying, theyre just an acquired taste, thats all. You have to get use to em. The smile was still stretching on Kristys face, Ill get used to them. I got used to you didnt I? Ha...ha. Very funny. Kristy went around the car so that she could walk with Charlie. Shoulder to shoulder they started off towards the party. They could not see the faces of any of the people in front of them, just cut out shapes from the giant backdrop of the lake, the night-starry sky, the fire, and the red and white pontoon that was beached (just begging to be taken out on a drunken midnight ride). A blacken shape started to approach them, Hey Chuck, it said enthusiastically, long time no see. The shape began to gain color. It was as if someone, something, was turning up the volume on the visual hi-fi. It was finally loud enough so they could
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see Lisko approaching with his arms out looking for a hug. Lisk! Charlie shouted and embraced him. Sean, this is Kristy. Kristy, this is Sean Lisko. Hello Kristy, Im glad you could make it. Thanks, nice to be here. This is a real nice spot. Yeah thanks, its my parents but they dont spend much time out here during the week. So you guys want a couple of beers? Charlie looked over to Kristy to ask her if she wanted one, but before he could even start to turn his head, before he even thought about turning his head she said Sure, Id love one. Well then follow me, me lady. Lisko and his stupid fuckin accent took Kristy by the arm and led her to the fire, leaving Charlie standing by himself. I mean really. Did that guy honestly think he could charm people with that fucking voice? It sounded like a drunken pirate being molested by an Irish priest and a Scottish fry cook. I mean good god, Ive heard funnier voices coming out of my asSounds like someone is jealous? Im not jealous; I just think it was a stupid voice thats all. Look, you have nothing to worry about. Your boy Charlie is doing just fine as far as the Kristy camp is concerned. But that Sean sure is cute with his clean cut blonde hair and nice dress pants. Well thats comforting coming from you there clueless. Besides, Im not jealous. I know that soon, very soon Charlie will be getting in that girls pants. Here we go. Charlie started off towards the fire and saw Kristy and Sean getting a beer. He was on his way over when he got headed off at the pass. Dude, wheres your broad? What? Oh, hey Stevie. Shes over there with Sean getting a beer.
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Well thats cool that she drinks man At least you didnt get a Christian. Charlie looked at him and sarcastically said, I guess thats something man youre right, slapped him on the shoulder, stepped around him, and went for the beer. The chatter around him was lively and sporadic. He heard lone words shooting out of conversations like, Death and Peanut Butter and Esoteric. All Charlie knew is that he wanted a beer, and fuckin fast. He thought that other boy was going to steal Kristy away from him? Im sure, you men are so insecure. You always have to prove your manhood to everybody even if they dont want to listen. Maybe were insecure because you woman are sluts. Maybe youre a jerk. Maybe Im not. MaybCharlie! Kristy said and handed him a cool one, I was wondering if you were ever going to come over here. I thought maybe you had left me. Now why would I go and do a thing like that? I dont know, because maybe you hate me? Maybe you think Im ugly? Maybe you think that Im not good enough for you? Charlie knew what she was doing. She was playing the game. She was acting coy. Charlie was now either supposed to do one of two things: A) reassure her about how he thought that she was nice, smart and funny and that he was having a good time, orNo, youre not good enough for me, but Ill stick around a little longer and see if I dont get lucky. he could do that. Charlie! Kristy laughed and backhanded him on the shoulder. Chas snapped that beer open and took a big pull out of it, smiling all the while.
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After a couple of beers, a couple of hours, and a whole shitload of swearing, Charlie, finally lit a heater. (The buzz said to do ithonestly.) Kristy, feeling a little warm herself, half yelled, Charlie! I didnt know you smoked. Everyone stopped and looked at Charlie. Charlie had the floor, granted there were only nine of them including the couple, but it was enough for Charlie to feel like he was on the spot. Thats because you havent slept with me yet. Charlie shrugged and smiled. Chris (Charlies buddy who works at a cabinet shop and who was standing next to Charlie) spit his fuckin beer all over the place. It mostly went into the fire, but some of it misted onto Charlies face. The rest of them stood there quietly, waiting in anticipation for what Kristy was going to do or say. It seemed like forever but it was only a few seconds (a fleeting moment, if you will). Hell in actuality it was no time at all because Kristy was laughing her fucking ass off. She was bent over with stomach muscles clenched. If she wouldve had a dick, she wouldve had to pinch it off to keep from pissin in her pants. Oh...My...God! I cant believe you just said that. That was probably the most disgusting thing Ive ever heard. Get a sense of humor. Holy shit, Charlie I cant believe you just said that! Chris said while still laughing and wiping the snot/beer from under his nose. Everyone just sat there and laughed, and laughed, and laugheduntil finally all there was was sporadic chuckle or someone whispering to themselves, That was so fucking funny. Thensilencenothingnot a sound.only the sound of night by a lakethe snapping of the firenature echoing off the waterand maybe a small tiny minute sound of collected breathing SoooooAnybody wanna do some coke? Jake (one of Charlies best friends) had a big shit-eatin grin on his face as he
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scanned the crowd for a reaction. That was all it took. It fanned the flames and they (small gathering) busted back in hysterics. Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out just about enough coke for everyone (at the party) to get fucked up. The crowd melted into a mob mentality and started to act like they were a crowd at a fuckin ball game. Chants erupted LETS GO JAKE! LETS GO JAKE! Angie (a former high school football cheerleader) gave a big, primal, drawn out, GOOOOOOOOOOOOO JAKE! There were scissor kicks and elbows-in-tight-stiff-arm-clapping-cheerleader-style. Jake pulled over the picnic table and Lisko ran in to get a vinyl album cover-jacket. The crowd milled about in anticipation. Charlie bit into his lower lip with anxiety tickling the ever living shit out of his feelings for Kristy. (Better yet, the part of his brain that his anxiety controlled was getting the shit beat out of it by the part of the brain that gave a shit about what Kristy thought of him). You mean the penis. (giggle) Holy Shit lady Im impressed. That was funny. God, I cant believe I said that. Im so embarrassed. See it feels good to let loose every once in awhile, doesnt it? I wouldnt call that letting loose, but yes, it did feel good. Maybe youll finally start to loosen up. I got one. I hope no one minds snortin off a Bing Crosby Christmas Album. Stevie laughed his ass off and Tay mocked, Jesus Lisko, dont you have any Sabbath in there? Jake took the album from Lisko and started to cut the blow on it, using a little replacement razor for various household shit. Okay! Jake shouted. Everyone, I need your attention. I have cut the first rail, repeat, I have cut the first rail. So if we could just have a volunteer to step forwa- Wait. I think we should let our guest go first Kristy, get on up here. Jake motioned to Kristy like he was some dirty traffic cop signaling that it was her turn to go.
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Charlie had a grin on his face; I say had because the fucker disappeared as soon as Jake said the K word. With a sullen (sorry) face, Charlie let his arms fall to his side as he heard, or at least thought he heard, Kristy let out a whoop. Beer was slowly tumbling out of his can as he saw Kristys ass shuffling up to the front of the line. Was this shit real? Was this beer that he was drinking? Was he on planet fucking earth? Was that chick that had giggled all night actually into that shit? The cotton that was layered over his reality was burned away when he heard Jake laugh out, And, my dear young Kristy, you will notice that the first rail is cut fittingly enough on the song titled, Im Dreaming of a White Christmas. Jake thought that this was hilarious, and frankly so did everyone else. All right! Kristy chirped and snatched the rolled bill away from Jake. She stuffed that thing in her nose with one hand, put her finger to her nostril with the other, bent over, and unloaded on that shit like she was auditioning for the coke slut on Miami Vice. She wiped the line out and stood up, flicked her hair back, actually rubbed some of the coke dust onto her top gum, smacked her lips and started to walk back to Charlie. At this point Chuck half expected God to step forward out of a tree and say, Naaaaw, Chas, Im just fuckin with ya, that didnt really happen. Then being God, he would rewind everything to the point where Kristy would respectfully decline. Holy Shit! What the hell was that? What the hell was what, Charlie? That, Charlie pointed towards the coke table (where his dry walling buddy Tay was rippin into a line), That coke shit. I didnt know you were into coke. Im not. What do you mean youre not, you just cleaned that shit up like you were Scarface. Charlie stood there; an internal shimmy was starting to shake the very foundation of what he thought was real.
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Is there something wrong Charlie? No, there is nothing wrong I just never would have thought that you would be into coke, thats all. I told you Charlie, Im not into coke. I just do it every once in awhile. Besides, you dont really even know me. Kristy lowered her eyes when she said that. I guess not. Charlie turned away and looked at the lake. The moon was reflecting off surface and was distorted by the waves. Distortion seemed to be everywhere. Are you mad? No Im not mad Im just a little tripped out. Come on Charlie, its not like Im the Beatles or something. Charlie had to smile at this. The Beatles probably had snorted, but they werent exactly known as being coke heads. (Rock and Roll means Cocaine in Latin.) NoI know that youre not the Beatles. Im just a little surprised, thats all. I have been sitting here looking at you for the last five minutes waiting for you to say something about your little princess the coke head, but I can see that you have nothing to say. Took you by surprise, I take it? Took me by surprise? Thats the understatement of the century. That took me out of my skin. I would have never thought that she would ever do anything like that. Thats what you get for being naive. Im not nave, Im just Hey, dont take it so hard. Its not like she just shot a baby for Christ sakes. She just did a little cokebig deal. How can you be so nonchalant about this? Shes doing drugs. Come oneveryones doing it. This is no time for jokes. This is serious. This is not ser102
Im sorry that I shocked, you Charlie. Kristy said it silently, self-consciously. She took a step forward closer to Charlie. Her heart kicked it up a couple of paces (some of that was the snow). Her breathing shallowed, she blinked her eyes slowly, almost tiredly. Thats okay. Charlie was hollow. The tingling radiated from his sex centers and shot down and up every nerve (the CNS and PNS were in a total gridlock. Nerves impulses were honking their horns and beating their dashboards trying to get through to places like the little toe and ear lobe). Charlie took some cool saturated night air into his lungs and held it, hoping that it would dissipate throughout his body, putting out his primal fire. He met her green eyes with his blue (and shared one of those moments that teenaged girls dream about and discuss with their friends at recess.) The anticipation was blunt, it was screaming under neon lights of recognition, just screaming its head off, Would you kiss her god-damnit! They moved ever closer to that first kiss, it was theirs to have. They were the only ones on the lake. Mosquitos turned away out of respect. The cigarette-beer-bottled air came streaming from Charlies lungs with the heat from his internal combustion as the only souvenir of its trip to the body. Their cool hands reached out in a mutual extension, and meshed. Skin over bones rubbed themselves against each other. Another step forward and the fingers were interlocked. Another step forward and the apex, the very tips of her tits, Im talking mostly the silk of her bra, pressed softly into Charlies chest. Neck muscles relaxed, and the eyes slowly started shutting, only allowing enough information in so that they could gauge range and distance of the incoming mouth. Charlie slowly ran his tongue over his lips to lubricate them, to moisten them, to prepare them. Kristy stopped her exhale so as not to carbon dioxide Charlie. The heat from each others faces were mingling in the spandrel in front of them. They could hear it. This was it, this was the very second that they both had been wait103
Hey Charlie! It was over. Fuckin What! Charlie stepped backed and yelled it over her shoulder (not letting go of her hands). You want some of this? Jake was standing there, just standing there, pointing down towards the pile with his eyebrows raised. Everyone was facing Charlie with gluttonous eyes. No-I-dont-want-any-of-that-shit! Charlie rifled off. He moved backed into position in front of Kristys face and in the background faintly heard, Good, that means more for us. All the little eyes turned away from the couple leaving them back to themselves, but the moment had passed. They slowly released the fingers from their lock. Charlies middle fingers slowly slid down Kristys middle fingers and he felt the smoothness of her nails before he fell off the edge. Ahhh Charlie turned his gaze off and to the right, to the ground where their shadows from the fire stretched into infinity. Kristy smiledsmiled the smile of Chutes and Ladders, skipping rope, and pig tails. You wanna get out of here? Charlie said it, hoping, nay, praying that she would say yes. The moon reflected off of Kristys lower lip making a little white spot of light on the red wet of her flesh. Charlies eyes were drawn to it and he watched her softly say, Yes. Taking her right hand into his left. they started to make their way to the car. Were outta here, he yelled. Nice meeting everyone. Yeahs and yess and goodbyes and nice meeting yous came spewing out of the pack that was hovering over the coke in some kind of desperate rugby scrum. Charlie and Kristy walked hand in hand to the light blue tempered steel of perfection. Charlie opened Kristys door, saw her in, and walked around to find that the door had been opened
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by the girl. (Not all the way wide open, just enough so all Charlie had to do was pull lightly.) The car started. Charlie turned off the radio, backed up, and drove on down the driveway towards Is that really the time? Yeah thats the time. What time you gotta be home? Well no particular time, but my grandma might be worried. I should probably get home. Thats no problem. Charlie steered the car in silence, awkward kisses gone awry and coca wishes were spinning in the minds of the two. Kristys heart was pounding out a stimulated bass beat with an alcohol Christmas filler. Charlies mind was bogged with a beer buzz afterthought and a pheromone cocktail. Silence was the blanket and their anticipation of the front door good bye was the hypothermic bed friend. Charlie? Kristy kept her eyes straight ahead, the yellow lines dashing under the car fueling the minds metronome. Yeah? I had a really great ti- She looked to Charlie to finish her thought. She wanted him to finish her thought, cementing their connection, but Charlie had nothing to say, he just looked at her and pulled a quiet smile. The miles drove away. The silence permeated the car and seeped its way into the porous bone of their femurs, phalanges and scapulas. Was the silence squirming in its seat? Was the silence beating down the hedonistic tendencies that were dancing in the rain? Were the hedonistic tendencies aware of their wet naked bodies and all of their shortcomings? Kristy? Yeah Charlie? Did I ever tell you about the time that I made a handicapped girl sad?
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No, Charlie, you havent. Kristy looked to Charlie, then back at the road. Charlie looked straight ahead, and ran his right thumb along the shoulder strap, holding him in in the event of a worse case scenario. Well, way back when I was in high school we got out of class early so that we could go see a speaker at the middle school across the street. The whole school got let out. I cant remember who the speaker was, but he must have been someone the school deemed worthy because they were lettin us out to see the guy. So anyway, my friend Fritz and I busted out of the school with the rest of the kids and started making our way there. There was this big hill that we all had to walk up and there were a ton of people. Fritz and I got stuck behind this big mass of a thing and started to act like idiots, you know, to get a rise out of people. Well I was back there and we were going slow and everything and I shout out, I mean I just yell, Hey Jesus Christ whats taking so long? What you gotta limp or something? (Charlie had the glazed gaze again. His hands were reaching into his closet [and they had on alcohol mittens] past all the shit hanging in there. Past the Kangaroo, past the first day in a new school, past the time he almost hit his mom in sixth grade, past all that shit, and grabbed an item for Kristy to check over and to see if she really wanted to wear this thing.) Well anyway Fritz and I broke out in to hysterics. We were just sitting in the back of everyone laughing our asses of when the crowd started splitting right down the middle right in front of us. Charlie raised his hand in the Karate chop position, closed his left eye, and stared down the crosshair length of his arm, over his thumb and pointer finger, and to the half illuminated road. Ill never forget it. People just started peeling away, one by one until there was only one girl left. She was wearing this oversized white stuffed jacket and had on these little black corduroy pants. And with intermittent zips of her pants, she was just limping up the hill, giving it everything shes got just
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to stay in front of this cluster of kids behind her. There was no way that she was going to get left behind again. Kristy sat and listened. The silence was broken, and the night was coagulated into a fresh wound of compassion and empathy. Fritz and I looked at each other and he let out one of those embarrassed laughs, turned bright red, and took one step to the right away from me. I just fuckin sat there white as a ghost. Here this little thing was just trying to fit in and I had to go and call her bluffIm mean fuck me for making her feel all bad and shit. Charlie turned his head and glanced out the drivers side window. He was trying to figure out why he told her that. He was trying butCharlie? Yeah. Kristy looked through almost inebriated eyes to the corner of his jaw, traced his mouth, dropped to his knees and whispered, Nothing. She said it loud enough for him to hear, but quiet enough for it to be a word of understanding. She had shown her plastic cosmetic stand hand with the coke and Charlie had shown his, with its veins and arteries and it scrapes and scars. The miles continued to tumble into the reflective mirrors and the reflective surfaces of their inner space illuminated their percussion hearts and disco minds. When Charlie pulled the sky ride into the Fillstones driveway it was 1:13 in the a.m. Kristys grandma had fallen asleep long ago with the thought of the weather mans prediction for tomorrow being a mostly sunny day. Charlie parked and turned the engine off. The car was quiet and dark. Silhouette jet black trees branched off on their faces as the front porch light shone in the backdrop. Kristy and Charlie looked at each other through the metaphysical forest and got out of the car. Charlie walked around and slowed his walk to steps, drag steps, where rocks rolled between his soles and the earth. Charlie took Kristys hand and they started walking to the front
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door on cracked, segmented cement slabs. Three insects were twirling around the bare white front porch light bulb, making far off waxed comb humming sounds. Charlie and Kristy climbed the three stairs to the tiny landing, the tiny stoop. Not letting go of her hand, Charlie stared at his feet. Tonight was good for me. I had a good time Kristy. He met her eyes just for a second before he looked up to the entomologist ballet. Tonight was good for me Charlie. I hope we can do this again. Me too. Side ways glances and finger caresses were all the rage when Kristy moved towards the door. She turned the brass knob, opened it up, stepped inside, and turned around to put her face into the threshold space. She held the knob with her left and grasped the door with her right. Charlie, hands in pockets, looked at her face framed by the door and the jam. Good night Charlie, Kristy said softy. Good night. Charlie took his right hand from his pocket and hip shot a half wave and started to step down the stairs backwards. Kristy, smiling, slowly moved the door shut. The lock clicked closed and Charlie turned around and started to walk back to his baby blue wheels. Once inside, Charlie put on his seatbelt, started the engine, turned her around and headed out the driveway. When he was half way gone, the front light turned off and the house and silhouetted trees disappeared. Charlie turned on the stereo, smiled, and leaned his head back against the headrest and said Jazz music. So thats my boy Charlie. And apparently thats my girl Kristy So do you think that they will(Shhh.)
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Gluttony Judi A. Rypma
Gluttony
Judi A. Rypma
So many gastrointestinal adventures of miniature consumers starved they say for Happy Meals-food missiles hurled across the cafeteria weekends clogging theaters to ogle Hannibal Lecter, risking victimless cannibalism like Gretel feasting on a great slab of gingerbread drywall, double-paned candy windows her sweet tooth inspiring an old woman who slaved over a sugar house to take her revenge in flesh though she postponed the buffet-salivating over a plumpening finger, salting and stewing, envisioning a juicier Hansel-basted, barbecued boy to satiate a feeding frenzy precipitated by one greedy girl or Snow White sampling leftover round steak swiped off the dwarves' plates exonerated perhaps by days in the forest trying to forget the queen had a taste for pickled lung and liver but how to excuse the girl later-belly full of groceries (paid for by seven benefactors) yet still unsatiated reaching for that juicy apple dangled
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Gluttony Judi A. Rypma
like a fleshy breast by someone eaten up with envy. She never admitted craving fancy lace, jeweled combs, plump fruits that would make her no better than the vain woman from whom she fled. And Goldilocks guzzling that porridge-first degree food theft though the beneficent bears awakening from a long winter's nap hungry and weary of berries and roots forgave her for treating their home like a free Holiday Inn. Jack, too, trading a perfectly good milk cow for a handfiil of beans that promised to sprout to epic proportions--become Jolly Green Giant of the vegetable world but no, he had to break in to the ogre's home, raid his kitchen, linger over breakfast, let the wife take the ultirnate risk. Forced in his recklessness to hide in the oven close to becoming Child on Toast yet he returned again and again for cash, goose, harp when he could've been content-sold more beans than Bird's Eye. Only the Gingerbread Boy failed to win riches, a princess, a home all sacrificed when he fled from one of the few sets of fairyland parents who valued what they created made his own agony racing through a world where everyone yearned to taste him and he was suitably devoured.
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Leonid Meteor Shower November 19, 2002 Donna Pucciani
Leonid Meteor Shower November 19, 2002

Donna Pucciani
November's Leonid was well-forecast, slivers of icy faith to be shaved off the frosted dawn. I watch, nose pressed against the dark, like David waiting for a glimpse of pearled flesh parting a towel. I have lain awake on August nights in a rust-webbed lawn chair seeking lights that never once appeared. I've blamed myopia, doubt, lack of patience for a faceful of midnight pillow. Now, a glint off eyeglasses, cynicism sharpened on the edge of nextdoor's porchlight. Then, a cosmic hiccup-but possibly there, in the implausible thereness hanging overhead. Blood muscled in a tightrope of desire, I shiver into the night circus, sing silence in silken hyphens four times twenty, lick poured milk splashed from the Dipper, drink moon, sip star. Ice-pick chips shard into my hair, feather-fired, faster than streaks of white chalk on a blackboard. The neighbors sleep. A dog barks. I stand alone in the big tent, skepticism swinging with trapezed stars burning the palms of my hands silver.
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Photograph: Emily Renaud
Photograph:
Emily Renaud
Murmuring vehicles, downtown, drones compete against the copulating chirp of birds on roofs fluttering in gutters, wet fucking on rustling tree branches, against a harpsichord canon tinking the laptop. all compete for this morning stillness that I might witness these creatures as they occur.
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Simulacra Silhouettes Alice Obrecht
Simulacra Silhouettes
Alice Obrecht
he next day at work I would hear complaints about the traffic. For many of my co-workers, the Walcott Street Bridge was a vital component of their commute home. But as of 5:27 pm Tuesday evening the bridge was blocked off to traffic, as I stood near the railing on this purged concrete and tried to convince Molly that a hair dye commercial was nothing to kill yourself over. Its not just the commercial, she said disdainfully. Yeah, I know. I said, prying back into her good graces. Its everything. Yeah, I know. * I met Molly on the street. She asked me if I was morally, emotionally or economically bankrupt. I answered, all of the above. So she had me over for tea and pancakes as her weekly act of charity. Molly liked to wear fishnets on her legs, heavy liner around her eyes, and no brassiere. It made her feel like an anachronism, which was important to her for some reason. It was established from the beginning, by Molly, that we could never be romantically involved. And, aside from her brief stint in a masturbatory fantasy, I erased all sexual thoughts of Molly and in time came to regard her as a sister. She was in love with a late 19th-century author and collected any artifact having to do with him, his life, and the boat on which he perished. They spent every Thursday afternoon with each other, usually at the museum where she would chat with his portrait about the various events of the week. As with her lover, Mollys time with me was spent with her doing most of the talking: He seemed disconcerted today. Perhaps his colic has come backhe had that as a child, you know. I believe colic is strictly a neonatal disease, I said.
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A what? That which only afflicts babies. Oh, maybe its gout then. Yes, it must have been gouthe was looking rather peakish today. I think my uncle died of gout. Or perhaps it was cirrhosis of the liver. Cirrhosis of the liver, now thats the way to go. Really, when you think of it, its death by overindulgence. And I know what the Puritans have to say about that, but in my opinion its a fine way to go. I mean, life is for the living, which is what my mother always said. She had eight siblings, did I ever tell you that? Eight, and all of themplus her parentsdied before she did. All the aunts and uncles and most of the cousins as well. She was the last one standing, and every time another one fell by the wayside shed just say, life is for the living, Molly! And then shed bake a pie for the wake and keep trucking. What was I talking about? Ohoverindulgence. Dont you think thats a grand way to go? Depends on what youre overindulging in. It seems that one who is afflicted with cirrhosis of the liver has had quite an overindulgence of sadness and misery. Just because you drink when youre depressed doesnt mean everyone else does, She scoffed. I bet that socialite Mrs. Fairbanksll die from cirrhosis. But not because she drinks when shes miserable and wants to feel sorry for herself, no sir, itll be a well-earned cirrhosis from countless parties and afternoon mint juleps. I said nothing. Come to think of it, Molly mused, I guess she probably is a rather sad woman. You think? I nodded. You know, wrinkles come from continuous flexion of the face muscles. That means if you have a lot of wrinkles youve smiled a lot in your life. Or frowned. I said. Or smiled, Molly restated. Its too bad you cant die
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from having too many wrinklesan overindulgence of smiling. I think thats how Im going to go. Perhaps, I said. * One Thursday I convinced Molly to forgo her weekly date and instead accompany me to the National Museum of Letters and Correspondences. She of course took greatest pleasure in the love letters, whilst I marveled over the ransom notices. We had our favorites in the general collection as well. Molly enjoyed one entitled Peaches:
Dear Rosemary, How many birds must I bake in a pie for you to taste the musky sweetness of a revenge served cold? The peaches of malcontent are ripe for picking. Their sandstone pits shall be the seeds of your demise. Plan your brunches wisely. Avoid grapefruit juiceit leads to distemper. Your dearly departed, Charlemagne Palestine
We marveled over one called Can You Tell? for almost eight minutes:
Queenie, I am attempting to posit a limitless self-positing, but the smell of your hair constantly interferes. The neighbor boy sprayed himself in the face with the hose today. As he stood there crying I told him it was bound to happenevery moment in his life is determined by a hodgepodge of genetics and environment. He responded that he was the Postmodern Prometheus and that I could go sit on my thumb. This brief exchange gave me hope for todays youth. Parrots in teacups, Fitzgerald
In the end, we concluded it was a neoclassical piece. I showed Molly my favorite exhibit, Briefs of Strange Passion and Circumstance. It included my most beloved piece in the entire
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museum:
Dear Prudence, My tea tastes rather pungent this morning. No one really knows what happened to Ms. Archers white picket fence, but were all in agreement that it was a primary factor in her mental collapse. Im not sure if collectivity leads to bliss or despair. Some advertisements came with the post today. Were you aware that Ive been making designs on you for some time? But maybe youll change your mind when the season rolls around. Its been very quiet lately. Meteorology is queer. I often imagine the world ending in some apocalyptic haze involving Stairmasters and beige curtains, with a little bit of movie popcorn thrown in for redemption. The hedge needs pruning. Regards, [name obscured]
Its called Trust, I said. What happened to Ms. Archer? said Molly. * The wind began to pick up awful fierce. Say, Molly, I yelled out to her. Wouldnt it be more prudent to hold this discussion indoors? Ill treat you to some tea crumpets included. She continued staring out onto the river, wind pulling her hair across her face. Then, I used to think seagulls were Japanese. What? I moved closer down the bridge towards her. I used to think seagulls were Japanesethe way they dive into the water like that. I dont understand, Molly. You know, like the kamikazes. Ah. I thought they were all suicidal, like it was hardwired into their systems. I think there are other animals like that too, but I cant remember. Its just, they dive so hard into the water
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Bam! She gave a little jerk. I dont think anything could survive that kind of impact. But theyre just fishing. Hmm? She had been thinking something else. I said, theyre just fishing, Molly. They dont diethey come back up and eat their catch and continue livingits beautiful, really. I wonder what the fish would say, she remarked. * In the duration of our relationship, Molly and I had only one serious fight. After a particularly grueling day I decided to drop by Mollys shanty for some tea and solace. She had been hanging daffodils all day and the place stank with a putrid, flowery scent. What do you think of the daffodils? She asked me. I think theyre wretched, I said. Well I think youre wretched, Molly scolded me, I have a very strong Danish ancestry, you know, and the Danes were capital at daffodil hangingI think preservation of ones cultural heritage is very valuable. Why? Why do you want to preserve outmoded rituals like that? Its pointless. People need to accept the death of old mythologies and integrate themselves into the modern narrative. Thats absurd, said Molly, People shouldnt let themselves be overrun by the tyranny of some over-arching doctrine. We should be allowed to practice our own doctrines and preserve the beliefs and practices of our ancestors. Its what makes us unique. If you try to preserve your culture, youll only end up losing it. Cultures change, traditions change. You just want everyone to hold onto these primitive beliefs so you can pigeonhole them more easily. So you can observe them and feel advanced in comparisonyou want to stop the evolution of cultures. You want to
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kill them, put them in formaldehyde and observe them like museum exhibits. I do not, Mollys temper flared briefly. I just dont think certain cultures should boss other ones aroundyou can change a lot of things about a culture without changing its core aspects. And changing a culture to fit another one isnt changeits death. Now drink your goddamn tea. * The world is imploding, she said, lifting her head up and talking into the wind. I read that somewhere. This guy says the world is imploding because nothing is real anymore. We live in the hyper-realwhere everything is just a simulation or a symbol. And we try to get past it, but we only end up using more symbols, which just makes things worse. Modern culture is on a down spiral into a tyranny of the image. I dont think thats exactly what he meant, I said. I pulled my coat around more tightly, He But its true, you know, she went on. I mean, even when we say I love you, thats a simulation. Because weve just read about romance in books or seen it in motion pictures. Its all scripted. But everythings like thathumans have always used symbols, havent they? I asked. Yeah, then maybe weve never known reality, said Molly. Maybe our standards for reality are too high, said I. * The last time I saw her before the bridge was five days earlier. At Mollys request, we went to the park with the merry-goround, which we rode four times. She rode a different horse on each run, while I stayed with the chocolate-colored steed with blue ribbons. Youre so consistent and predictable, she laughed, I bet people think youre boringbut not me. Youre marvelous. We walked around for a while. I bought her her first corn
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dog. She took one bite, spat it out, but continued carrying the thing around. It completes the picture, she said. The picture of what? I asked. You know. The picture of us in the park on an afternoon. With the merry-go-round and the lightness of my hair and the breeze that ripples my skirt flirtatiously but not perversely. And the old woman feeding pigeons over there and the old men playing chess. And the children running and screaming and crying. And the corn dog and youll say you want to marry me and Ill say Im free next Tuesday and then youll kiss me and Ill start to cry and well all fade to black I dont think youre well, I said. You should take a holiday or something. She stopped walking and stared at a homeless man sleeping in a pile of his own rubbish on a bench. I fear the world is getting tired of itself, she said. She let the corn dog slip out of her hand And Im getting tired too. * At the beginning there were just frames of this woman who looked sort of dumpy, I guess, From the edge of the bridge Molly explained the commercial to me. I dont think she really looked that bad, but you could tell they were trying to use lighting and angles to make her seem unattractive. Anyway, then they cut to her using this hair dye and all of a sudden shes a new person and all these guys are looking at her. And shes getting some promotion at work and then water skiingall this stuff. And the announcer sings something like, Change your style, change your life. Yeah? I said. Yeah, and I just thought, this is ridiculous. This is the epitome of our cultural downslide. To think that just by changing the color of your hairI mean, people cant do this, people cant just
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build their lives out of products and insignificant properties of themselves. I thought life was more than that. For some people its not. Right? I mean, you can live your life in a more meaningful way and accept that others wont, cant you? Why should you care how other people are living? Because it makes me sad. Because I love them and want them to stop killing themselves. You cant be everyones savior, Molly, I said. You saved me, isnt that enough? She turned her head towards me. I saved you? Sure. She looked at me with pride and sniffed. I asked her about her 19th century lover. I dont know, she said, turning her gaze back to the river. I dont think things between us are working out, ever since they moved in the portraits of those naked women across the exhibit room. But somehow its the realest thing I have She trailed off for a moment, I just want to feel alive. You understand? I want to know what its like to be true. The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true, I recited. Say goodbye to him for me, she said. Then, arms splayed, she leapt out over the water, swooped down like a seagull, and then rose up and flew away.
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Night Flight Over Water William Jolliff
Night Flight Over Water

William Jolliff
The taste of someone else's air Whispered through the cabin, where My only face, one leprous statue, Loosened toward its double pane. And then a continent began. The lights of ports, the lights of towns Tossed diamonds through the fog, A choir of candles singing mass, lost On this deaf left eye; toward the other, Only black where the rocky coast of Plymouth Must have been, where waves who know Such nights lap the thigh of that bright coast. I thought of you and Massachusetts Bay When lights began to flicker, to stray Along what once had been our wilderness, Its only partner darkness, in darkness dressed.
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If I Could Dream Like William Butler Yeats William Jolliff
If I Could Dream Like William Butler Yeats

William Jolliff
If I could dream like William Butler Yeats, I would worry the dawn with listening to the melting of my own vowels slipping between warm sheets, turning first to the moan beside me, then to sounds reaching each other, stretching gently to the lips they share, until I would doze into some old valley of sunflowers, where sacred steps lead always up the clouds, then toward an inner chamber, finished in emerald, where the woman with a harp would note the sad condition of my bow, pluck hair from her head, and craft a jig of sandalwood. Soon I'd be fiddling again, and because I know sleep comes slowly to the hungry, the empty, I would feel, even in the vision, my belly's ache and half a million others, and beneath the hill the sidhe would rant and pipe me fighting songs and sometimes dirges, until I could sing no more, love no more, and I would dream my final dream not of Cuchulain or revolution, but of a woman who looks the sister of sleep, just within my reach.
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Geese ZZ Packer
Geese
ZZ Packer
hen people back home asked her why she was leaving Baltimore for Tokyo, Dina told them she was going to Japan in the hopes of making a pile of money, socking it away, then living somewhere cheap and tropical for a year. Back home, money was the only excuse for leaving, and it was barely excuse enough to fly thousands of miles to where people spoke no English. "Japan!" Miss Gloria had said. Miss Gloria was her neighbor; a week before Dina left she sat out on the stoop and shared a pack of cigarettes with Miss Gloria. "Japan," Miss Gloria repeated, looking off into the distance, as though she might be able to see Honshu if she looked hard enough. Across the street sat the boarded-up row houses the city had promised to renovate. Dina tried to look past them, and habored the vague hope that if she came back to the neighborhood they'd get renovated, as the city had promised. "Well, you go 'head on," Miss Gloria said, trying to sound encouraging. "You go 'head on and learn that language. Find out what they saying about us over at Chong's." Chong's was the local take-out with the best moo goo gai pan around, but if someone attempted to clanfy an order, or changed it, or even hesitated, the Chinese family got all huffed, yelling as fast and violent as kung fu itself. "Chong's is Chinese, Miss Gloria." "Same difference." The plan was not well thought-out, she admitted that much. Or rather, it wasn't really a plan at all, but a feeling, a nebulous fluffy thing that had started in her chest, spread over her heart like a fog. It was sparked by movies in which she'd seen Japanese people bowing ceremoniously, torsos seesawing; her first Japanese meal, when she'd turned twenty, and how she'd
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marveled at the sashimi resting on its bed of rice, rice that lay on a lacquered dish the color of green tea. She grew enamored of the pen strokes of kanji, their black sabers clashing and warring with one another, occasionally settling peacefully into what looked like the outlines of a Buddhist temple, the cross sections of a cozy house. She did not want to say it, because it made no practical sense, but in the end she went to Japan for the delicate sake cups, resting in her hand like a blossom; she went to Japan for loveliness. After searching for weeks for work in Tokyo, she finally landed a job at an amusement park. It was called Summerland, because, in Japan, anything vaguely amusing had an English name. It was in Akigawa, miles away from the real Tokyo, but each of her previous days of job hunting had sent her farther and farther away from the city. "Economic down-turn," one Office Lady told her. The girl, with her exchange-student English and quick appraisal of Dina's frustration, seemed cut out for something better than a receptionist's job, but Dina understood that this, too, was part of the culture. A girlwomanwould work in an office as a glorified photocopier, and when she became Christmasu-keeki, meaning twenty-five years old, she was expected to resign quietly and start a family with a husband. With no reference to her race, only to her Americanness in general, the Office Lady had said, sadly, "Downturn means people want to hire Japanese. It's like, obligation." So when the people at Summerland offered her a job, she immediately accepted. Her specific job was operator of the Dizzy Teacups ride, where, nestled in gigantic replicas of Victorian teacups, Japanese kids spun and arced and dipped before they were whisked back to cram school. Summerland, she discovered, was the great gaijin dumping ground, the one place where a non-Japanese foreigner was sure to land a job. It was at Summerland that she met Arillano Justinio Arroyo, with his perfectly round smiley-face head, his luxurious black hair, always parted in the middle, that fell on
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either side of his temples like an open book. Ari was her coworker, which meant they would exchange mop duty whenever a kid vomited. By summer's end, both she and Ari found themselves unamused and jobless. She decided that what she needed, before resuming her search for another job, was a vacation. At the time, it made a lot of sense. So she sold the return part of her roundtrip ticket and spent her days on subways in search of all of Tokyo's corners: she visited Asakusa and gazed at the lit red lanterns of Sensoji Temple; she ate an outrageously expensive bento lunch under the Asahi brewery's giant sperm-shaped modernist sculpture. She even visited Akihabara, a section of Tokyo where whole blocks of stores sold nothing but electronics she couldn't afford. She spent an afternoon in the waterfront township of Odaiji, where women sunned themselves in bikinis during the lunch hour. But she loved Shinjuku the most, that garish part of Tokyo where pachinko parlors pushed against ugly gray earthquake-resistant buildings; where friendly, toothless vendors sold roasted unagi, even in rainy weather. Here, the twelve-floor department stores scintillated with slivers of primary colors, all the products shiny as toys. The subcity of Shinjuku always swooned, brighter than Vegas, lurid with sword-clashing kanji in neon. Skinny prostitutes in miniskirts swished by in pairs like schoolgirls, though their pouty red lips and permed hair betrayed them as they darted into doorways without signs and, seemingly, without actual doors. At the end of each day, she took the subway, reboarding the Hibiya-sen tokkyuu, which would take her back to the gaijin hostel in Roppongi. She rented her room month to month, like the Australians, Germans, and Canadians and the occasional American. The only other blacks who lived in Japan were Africans: the Senegalese, with their blankets laid out in front of Masashi-Itsukaiichi station, selling bootleg Beatles albums and Tupperware; the Kenyans in Harajuku selling fierce tribal masks and tarry per125
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fumed oils alongside Hello Kitty notebooks. The Japanese did not trust these black gaijin, these men who smiled with every tooth in their mouths and wore their cologne turned on high. And though the Japanese women stared at Dina with the same distrust, the business-suited sararimen who passed her in the subway stations would proposition her with English phrases they'd had gaijin teach them"Verrry sexy," they'd say, looking around to make sure women and children hadn't overheard them. And even on the tokkyuu itself, where every passenger took a seat and immediately fell asleep, the emboldened men would raise their eyebrows in brushstrokes of innuendo and loudly whisper, "Verry chah-ming daaark-ku skin." Ari found another job. Dina didn't. Her three-month visa had expired and the Japanese were too timid and suspicious to hire anyone on the sly. There were usually only two lines of work for American gaijinteaching or modeling. Modeling was out she was not the right race, much less the right blondness or legginess, and with an expired visa she got turned down for teaching and tutoring jobs. The men conducting the interviews knew her visa had expired, and that put a spin on things, the spin being that they expected her to sleep with them. Dina had called Ari, wanting leads on jobs the English language newspapers might not advertise. Ari agreed to meet her at Swensen's, where he bought her a scoop of chocolate mint ice cream. "I got offered a job at a pachinko parlor," he said. "I can't do it, but you should. They only offered me the job because they like to see other Asians clean their floors." She didn't tell him that she didn't want to sweep floors, that too many Japanese had already seen American movies in which blacks were either criminals or custodians. So when they met again at Swensen's, Dina still had no job and couldn't make the rent at the foreign hostel. Nevertheless, she bought him a scoop of red bean ice cream with the last of her airplane money. She
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didn't have a job and he took pity on her, inviting her to live with him in his one-room flat. So she did. And so did Petra and Zoltan. Petra was five-foot-eleven and had once been a model. That ended when she fell down an escalator, dislocating a shoulder and wrecking her face. She'd had to pay for the reconstructive surgery out of her once sizable bank account and now had no money. And Petra did not want to go back to Moldova, could not go back to Moldova, it seemed, though Ari hadn't explained any of this when he brought Petra home. He introduced her to Dina as though they were neighbors who hadn't met, then hauled her belongings up the stairs. While Ari strained and grunted under the weight of her clothes trunks, Petra plopped down in a chair, the only place to sit besides the floor. Dina made tea for her, and though she and Ari had been running low on food, courtesy dictated that she bring out the box of cookies she'd been saving to share with Ari. "I have threads in my face," Petra said through crunches of cookie. "Threads from the doctors. One whole year"she held up a single aggressive finger"I have threads. I am thinking that when threads bust out, va voom, I am having old face back. These doctors here"Petra shook her head and narrowed her topaz eyes"they can build a whole car, but cannot again build face? I go to America next. Say, 'Fix my face. Fix face for actual.' And they will fix." She nodded once, like a genie, as though a single nod were enough to make it so. Afterward she made her way to the bathroom and sobbed. Of course, Petra could no longer model; her face had been ripped into unequal quadrants like the sections of a TV dinner, and the stitches had been in long enough to leave fleshy, zipperlike scars in their place. The Japanese would not hire her either; they did not like to view affliction so front and center. In turn, Petra refused to work for them. Whenever Dina went to look for a job, Petra made it known that she did not plan on working for
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the Japanese: "I not work for them even if they pay me!" Her boyfriend Zoltan came with the package. He arrived in toto a week after Petra, and though he tried to project the air of someone just visiting, he'd already tacked pictures from his bodybuilding days above the corner where they slept across from Ari and Dina. Petra and Zoltan loved each other in that dangerous Eastern European way of hard, sobbing sex and furniture-pounding fights. Dina had been living with Ari for a month and Petra and Zoltan for only two weeks when the couple had their third major fight. Zoltan had become so enraged that he'd stuck his hand on the orange-hot burner of the electric range. Dina had been adding edamame to the udon Ari was reheating from his employee lunch when Zoltan pushed between the two, throwing the bubbling pot aside and pressing his hand onto the lit burner as easily and noiselessly as if it were a Bible on which he was taking an oath. "Zoltan!" Dina screamed. Ari muttered a few baffled words of Tagalog. The seared flesh smelled surprisingly familiar, like dumplings, forgotten and burning at the bottom of a pot. The burner left a bull's-eye imprint on Zoltan's palm, each concentric circle sprouting blisters that pussed and bled. Petra wailed when she saw; it took her two weeping hours to scour his melted fingerprints from the burner. And still, they loved. That same night they shook the bamboo shades with their passion. When they settled down, they baby-talked to each other in Moldovan and Hungarian, though the first time Dina heard them speak this way it sounded to her as if they were reciting different brands of vodka. After the hand-on-the-range incident, Zoltan maundered about with the look of a beast in his lair. The pictures from his bodybuilding days that he tacked on the walls showed him brown, oiled, and bulging, each muscle delineated as though he were constructed of hundreds of bags of hard-packed sugar.
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Though he was still a big man, he was no longer glorious, and since they'd all been subsisting on crackers and ramen, Zoltan looked even more deflated. For some reason he had given up bodybuilding once he stepped off the plane at Narita, though he maintained that he was winning prizes right up until then. If he was pressed further than that about his past, Petra, invariably orbiting Zoltan like a satellite, would begin to cry. Petra cried a lot. If Dina asked Petra about life in Moldova or about modeling in Ginza, she cried. If Dina so much as offered her a carrot, this, too, was cause for sorrow. Dina had given up trying to understand Petra. Or any of them, for that matter. Even Ari. Once she'd asked him why he did it, why he let them stay. Ari held out his hand and said, "See this? Five fingers. One hand." He then made a fist, signifyingshe supposed strength. She didn't exactly understand what he was driving at: none of them helped out in any real way, though she, unlike Petra and Zoltan, had at least attempted to find a job. He looked to her, fist still clenched; she nodded as though she understood, though she felt she never would. Things simply made all of them cry and sigh. Things dredged from the bottoms of their souls brought them pain at the strangest moments. Then Sayeed came to live with them. He had a smile like a sealed envelope, had a way of eating as though he were horny. She didn't know how Ari knew him, but one day, when Dina was practicing writing kanji characters and Petra was knitting an afghan with Zoltan at her feet, Ari came home from work, Sayeed following on his heels. "We don't have much," Ari apologized to Sayeed after the introductions. Then he glared at the mess of blankets on the floor, "and as you can see, we are many people, sleeping in a tiny, six-tatami room. Sayeed didn't seem to mind. They all shared two cans of a Japanese soft drink, Pocan Sweat, taking tiny sips from their sake
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cups. They shared a box of white chocolate Pokki, and a sandwich from Ari's employee lunch. Sayeed stayed after the meal and passed around cigarettes that looked handmade, though they came from a box. He asked, occasionally gargling his words, what each of them did. Having no jobs, they told stories of their past: Petra told of Milan and the runways and dressing up for the opera at La Scala. But mostly she recalled what she ate: panseared foie gras with pickled apricot gribiche sauce; swordfish tangine served with stuffed cherries; gnocchi and lobster, swimming in brown butter. "Of course," she said, pertly ashing her cigarette, "we had to throw it all up." "Yes yes yes," Sayeed said, as though this news delighted him. Zoltan talked of Hungary, and how he was a close relation of Nagy, the folk hero of the '56 revolution. He detailed his bodybuilding regime: how much he could bench-press, how much he could jerk, and what he would eat. Mainly they were heavy foods: soups with carp heads, bones, and fins; doughy breads cooked in rendered bacon fat; salads made of meat rather than lettuce. Some sounded downright inedible, but Zoltan recalled them as lovingly and wistfully as if they were dear departed relations. Dina did not want to talk about food but found herself describing the salmon croquettes her mother made the week before she died. Vats of collards and kale, the small islands of grease floating atop the pot liquor, cornbread spotted with dashes of hot sauce. It was not the food she ate all the time, or even the kind she preferred, but it was the kind she wanted whenever she was sick or lonely; the kind of food that-when she got it-she stuffed in her mouth like a pacifier. Even recollecting food from the corner stores made her stomach constrict with pleasure and yearning: barbecue, Chong's take-out, peach cobbler. All of it delicious in a lardy, fatty, condiment-heavy way.
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Miasmas of it so strong that they pushed through the styrofoam boxes bagged in brown paper. "Well," Ari said, when Dina finished speaking. Since they had nothing else to eat, they smoked. They waited to see what Sayeed would do, and as the hours passed, waited for him to leave. He never did. That night Ari gave him a blanket and Sayeed stretched out on a tatami, in the very middle of the room. Instead of pushing aside the low tea table, he simply arranged his blanket under it, and as he lay down, head under the tea table, he looked as though he had been trying to retrieve something from under it and had gotten stuck. Over the next few days they found out that Sayeed had married a non-Moroccan woman instead of the woman he was arranged to marry. His family, her family, the whole country of Morocco, it seemed, disowned him. Then his wife left him. He had moved to Tokyo in the hope of opening a business, but the money that was supposed to have been sent to him was not sent. "They know! They know!" he'd mutter while smoking or praying or boiling an egg. Dina assumed he meant that whoever was supposed to send Sayeed money knew about his nonMoroccan ex-wife, but she could never be sure. Whenever Sayeed mused over how life had gone wrong, how his wife had left him, how his family had refused to speak to him, he glared at Dina, as though she were responsible. One night she awoke to find Sayeed panting over her, holding a knife at her throat. His chest was bare; his pajama bottoms glowed from the streetlights outside the window. Dina screamed, waking Petra, who turned on a light and promptly began to cry. Ari and Zoltan gradually turtled out of their sleep, saw Sayeed holding the knife at her throat, saw that she was still alive, and looked at her hopelessly, as though she were an actress failing to play her part and die on cue. When Zoltan saw that it had nothing to do with him, he went back to sleep. Sayeed rattled off accusingly at Dina in Arabic until Ari led him into the hallway.
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She sat straight up in the one pair of jeans she hadn't sold and a nearly threadbare green bra. Ari came back, exhausted. She didn't know where Sayeed was, but she could hear Japanese voices in the hallway, their anger and complaints couched in vague, seemingly innocuous phrases. They have a lot of people living there, don't they? meant, Those foreigners! Can't they be quiet and leave us in peace! and I wonder if Roppongi would ofter them more opportunities meant, They should go to Roppongi where their own kind live! Ari tried to slam the door shut, as if to defy the neighbors, as if to add a dramatic coda to the evening, but Zoltan had broken the door in one of his rages, and it barely closed at all. "He probably won't do it again," he said. "What! What do you mean by 'probably won't'?" Zoltan sleepily yelled for her to shut up. Petra sat in her corner with a stray tear running in a rivulet along one of her scars. Then Ari was suddenly beside Dina, talking to her in broken English she hadn't the energy to try to understand. He turned the light out, his arm around her neck. Soon they heard Petra and Zoltan going at it, panting and pounding at each other till it seemed as though they'd destroy the tatami under them. Dina and Ari usually slept side by side, not touching, but that night he'd settled right beside her and put his arm around her neck. an smelled like fresh bread, and as she inhaled his scent it occurred to her that his arm around her neck was meant to calm her, to shut her up-nothing romantic. Nevertheless, she nudged him, ran her palm against his arm, the smoothest she ever remembered touching, the hairs like extensions of liquid skin. He politely rolled away. "You should wear more clothes. She tugged the sheet away from him and said, "I can't take this." She hated how they all had to sleep in the tiny, six-tatami room, how they slept so close to one another that in the dark Dina could tell who was who by smell alone. She hated how they
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never had enough to eat, and how Ari just kept inviting more people to stay. It should have been just he and she, but now there were three others, one of whom had just tried to kill her, and she swore she could notwould nottake it anymore. "Can't take?" he asked, managing to yell without actually yelling. "Can't take, can't take!" he tried to mimic. He turned on the light as if to get a better look at her, as if he'd have to check to make sure it was the same woman he'd let sleep under his roof. "But you must!" She had nowhere else to go. So she and Sayeed worked out a schedule-not a schedule exactly, but a way of doing things. If he returned from a day of looking for work, he might ask everyone how the day had gone. In that case, she would not answer, because she was to understand that he was not speaking to her. If she was in one corner of the room, he would go to another. Sometimes she would take a crate and sit outside the stoopless apartment building and try to re-create the neighborhood feeling she'd had at home with Miss Gloria. The sun would shine hotly on the pavement, and the movement of people everywhere, busy and self-absorbed, would have to stand in for the human music of Baltimore. The corner grocery stores back home were comforting in their dinginess, packed high with candies in their rainbow-colored wrappings, menthols, tall boys and magnums, racks of chips and sodas, but best of all, homemade barbecue sandwiches, the triangled white bread sopping up the orange-red sauce like a sponge. Oh, how she missed it. The men who loitered outside playing their lottery numbers and giving advice to people too young to take it, the mothers who yelled viciously at their children one minute, only to hug and kiss them the next. How primping young boys played loud music to say the things they couldn't say. How they followed the unspoken rules of the neighborhood: Never advertise your poverty. Dress immaculately. Always smell good, not just clean.
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For a few minutes, the daydream would work, even in Japan. Once, when looking for a job in Shibuya, she eyed a cellophane Popsicle wrapper nestled up against a ginkgo. It was gaudily beautiful with its stripes of orange ooze from where a kid had licked it. Just when she felt a rush of homesickness, a Japanese streetworker, humbly brown from daily hours in the sun, conscientiously swept the little wrapper into his flip-top box, and it was gone. The day after Sayeed tried to kill her, she took the train to Roppongi, and though she had no money for train fare, she pounded on the window of the information booth, speaking wildly in English, peppering her rant with a few words of Japanese. She said the machine hadn't issued her a ticket. The Japanese girl at the information counter looked dumbly at the Plexiglas, repeating that the machine had never broken. They would not outwit her: Dina knew that the Japanese did not like to cause scenes, nor be recipients of them. She pitched her voice loudly, until everyone in the station turned around. Finally, the information girl pressed a hidden button and let her through. She did not want to go back to Roppongi, where she'd first lived, where she had unsuccessfully searched for jobs before, but Sayeed's knife convinced her to redouble her efforts. She hoped to get a job from Australians or Canadians who might overlook her lack of visa. She wished she'd taken the job at the pachinko parlor, but now it was gone; she hoped for a job doing anythingdishwasher, street cleaner, glass polisher, leaflet passerbut she did not get one. They could not go starving, so they began to steal. While Ari was away at work, Zoltan swiped packaged steaks, Sayeed swiped fruit and bread and one time even couscous, opening the package and pouring every single grain into two pants pockets.
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Even though she never would have stolen anything in America, stealing in Japan gave Dina the same giddy, weightlessness that cursing in another language did. You did it because it was unimportant and foreign. She stole spaghetti, rice, fruit. Keebler cookies all the way from America. But Petra outdid them all. She went in with a sack rigged across her stomach, then stuffed a sweater in it to look as though she was pregnant, and began shopping. When the sack got full, she'd go to the bathroom, put on her sweater, and pay for a loaf of bread. But Petra's trick didn't last long. She went to get Zoltan a watermelon for his birthday and the sack gave way. She gave birth to the watermelon, which split open wide and red, right in front of her. The store manager, a nervous Japanese man in his forties, brought her to Zoltan, telling him, in smiling, broken English, to keep her at home. Since then, the stores in the area became suspicious of foreigners, pregnant or otherwise. They'd all been caught. They'd all made mad dashes down the street, losing themselves in crowds and alleys. And they didn't even have the money to get on the train to steal food elsewhere. It was impossible to jump the turnstilesthey were all electronic. Eventually they got to a point where they never left their one-room flat, knowing that they would see people selling food, stores selling food, people eating food, people whose faces reminded them of food. And then they simply gave up. Some alloy of disgust and indifference checked the most human instinct, propelling them into a stagnant one-room dementia. It was a secret they shared: there were two types of hungerone in which you would do anything for food, the other in which you could not bring yourself to complete the smallest task for it. Ari came home from work and declared that they must all go to the park. They looked at him uncomprehendingly. Sayeed went to his corner of the room and said, under his breath, "They
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know." Zoltan stood there, looking as though he had somewhere to go but had forgotten where. Petra bit her fingernails, her sunset-blond hair in unwashed clumps, framing her scars. "Why the park?" Dina asked. "Look," he said, reaching into his backpack to show them a block of cheese that was hardened on the ends, some paprika, a box of crackers, a plum. Dina remembered that all that was left in the refrigerator were two grapefruits. She salivated when her gaze settled on the bunch of bananas on the countertop. These he did not take. "Let's go," he said. Sayeed rose from where he'd been sitting on the tatami; Zoltan grabbed Petra's arm and led her toward the door. Once they'd gathered at the doorway, they looked at one another in silence, as if they had nothing further to say. Ari did not bother to lock the door. They sat in Shakuji-koen Park, dazed with the sunlight, surrounded by an autumn of yellow ginkgo trees. For the most part, the sky was gray, shot through with fibrous clouds. The Japanese families sat like cookies arranged on a plate. The son of the family closest to them was as bronzed as Dina, a holdover tan from the summer. He bit into the kind of neat, crustless sandwiches Dina had seen mothers unwrap at Summerland. The girl was singing while her mother was talking to another mother, who agreed, "Ne, ne, ne!" as she bounced a swaddled baby on her hip. The father dozed off on a blanket of red and white squares. The boy nibbled at his sandwich as the five of them watched. When the boy saw the foreigners stanng at him, at his sandwich, he ran to his sister and pointed. Five gaijin, all together, sitting Buddha-like. The boy looked as though he wanted to come right up and ask them questions in the monosyllabic English he had learned from older boys who had spoken togaijin before. Do you have tails? If so, would you kindly show them to
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me and my sister? Do you come out at night and suck blood? He would look at Dina and ask if the color rubbed off. He wanted to ask them these questions and more, if his limited English permitted, but the girl had enough shyness for the both of them, and held him back, a frightened smile on her face. Ari took out the crackers, the cheese with the hard ends, the paprika, the salt, and the plum. "I lost my job," he said. Quietly, shamefully, they mustered out their Sorrys. She'd expected him to lash out, tell all of them to leave, but he didn't. "I'll pay you back," Dina said, "every penny. "You mean yen," Ari said. They ate the crackers with sliced plum and cheese on top. Then Petra spoke. "I do not like cheese," she said. Everyone looked at her, her pouting lips and unblinking eyes. Zoltan clenched her arm. Petra had taken her slices of cheese off her sandwiches and Zoltan grabbed the slices with one fist and thrust them at her. They fell humbly into the folds of her shirt. "You don't have to eat them," Ari said. But Petra knew she had to eat the cheese, that the cheese mattered. She ate it and looked as if she might cry, but didn't. They sat for a while. The food melted in Dina's stomach just as the sunset melted, their synchronized fading seeming to make the whole world go dimmer and volumeless. Then she felt a sharp pain, as though the corners of the crackers had gone down her throat unchewed. None of them spoke, and that seemed to make the pain in her stomach worse. They watched the people and the lake and the sun, now only a thread of light. "Look," Sayeed said. Geese. Stretching their necks, paying no mind to humans. Zoltan bolted upright from where he lay and ran after them. For a few moments, the geese flew hysterically, but then landed yards
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away from him, waddling toward escape, all the while snapping up bits of crackers the Japanese had thrown just for them. When Zoltan started the chase anew, Dina realized he was not after the crackers but the geese themselves. She imagined Zoltan grabbing one of the thin, long necks, breaking it with a deft turn of wrist. And what would all the Japanese, quietly sitting in the park, make of it all? She skipped over that scene, speeding ahead to the apartment, everyone happily defeathering the bird, feathers lifting and floating then descending on their futons and blankets, the down like snow, the underfeathers like ash. They'd land on Petra's trunks, empty now that all her clothes had been sold, and they'd land on the tea table at which they used to eat. They would make a game of adjusting the oven dials, then wait out the hours as the roasted gamy smell of the goose made them stagger and salivate. And there would be a wishbone, but it wouldn't matter, because they'd all have the same wish. Zoltan ran as haphazard as a child chasing after them, and when he seemed within grasp of a few tailfeathers, the geese flew off for good. When he returned, he dusted off the blanket before sitting down, as though nothing had happened. All Japanese eyes were on them, and it was the first time Dina thought she had actually felt embarrassment in the true Japanese sense. Everyone was looking at them, and she'd never felt more foreign, more gaijin. Someone laughed. At first she thought it was Sayeed, his high-pitched laughter that made you happy. Then Dina saw that it was one of the Japanese picnickers. Families clapped, one after the other, cautious, tentative, like the first heavy rains on a rooftop, then suddenly everyone was clapping. Applause and even whistles, all for Zoltan, as though he had meant to entertain them. an made a motion for them to stop, but they continued for what seemed like minutes, as if demanding an encore. They did not stop, even when Zoltan nuzzled his head into Petra's gray corduroy shirt so no one could see him weep.
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It was a week after they saw the geese that Ari sliced up the grapefruit and banana into six pieces each. Dina watched them eat. Sayeed, his face dim as a brown fist, took his banana slice and put it underneath his tongue. He would transfer the warm disk of banana from side to side in his mouth until, it seemed, it had grown so soft that he swallowed it like liquid. He nibbled away at half a wedge of the grapefruit, tearing the fibers from fruit to skin with his bitten-down lips. He popped what was left of his grapefruit into his mouth like a piece of chewing gum. Petra let her slices sit for a while and finally chewed the banana, looking off from the side of her eye as if someone had a gun pointed to her head. She wrapped up her grapefruit slice in a bit of leftover Saran Wrap and went to her corner to lie down. Zoltan rubbed his eyes, put the banana slice on the flat side of the grapefruit and swallowed them both whole, grapefruit peel and all. Ari ate his slices with delicate motions, and after he'd finished, smiled like a Buddha. Dina ate her fruit the way she thought any straightforward, normal American would. She bit into it. One more piece sat on the plate. "Anybody want that?" Dina asked. No one said anything. She looked around to make sure. No one had changed. She ate the last piece, wiped the grapefruit juice from around the corners of her mouth, looked at the semicircle of foreign faces around her, and knew she had done the wrong thing. She needed to go to Shinjuku. Once again, she claimed the turnstile wouldn't issue her a ticket, and although the girl at the counter didn't look convinced, she gave Dina a ticket. When she got to Shinjuku, it was going on noon. Sararimen hurled by, smiling with their colleagues, bowing for their bosses to enter doors first. Mothers shopped, factory workers sighed, shopworkers chattered with other shopworkers. The secretaries and receptionists-the "Office Ladies"-all freshened their lipstick and straight139
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ened their hairbows. The women in the miniskirts rushed past as though late. She stood in the Shinjuku station, though she hadn't ridden the train to get there. She read an old magazine she'd brought along. Finally, a sarariman approached her. "Verrrry sexy. He paid for the love motel with a wad of yen. "CAN RENT ROOM BY OUR!" screamed a red-lettered sign on the counter. Dina ascended the dark winding staircase, the sarariman following. The room had only a bed and a nightstand, though these simple furnishings now seemed like luxuries. He watched her undress and felt her skin only after she'd taken everything off. He rubbed it as if he were trying to find something underneath. The inside of her closed eyelids were orange from a slit of sunlight that had strayed into the room. The sarariman shook her. She opened her eyes. He raised his eyebrows, looking from Dina to the nightstand. The nightstand had a coin- operated machine attached. "Sex toy?" he asked, in English. "No," she said, in Japanese. The motel room sheets were perfect and crisp, reminding her of sheets from home. She touched the sarariman's freshly cut Asian hair, each shaft sheathed in a sheer liquid of subway sweat. The ends of the shortest hairs felt like the tips of lit, hissing firecrackers. He was apologetic about the short length of time. "No problem," she told him in Japanese. She left with a wad of yen. While riding the tokhyuu she watched life pass, alert employees returning to work, uniformed school children on a field trip. It all passed bybuildings, signs, throngs of people everywhere. When the train ran alongside a
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park, yellow ginkgo leaves waved excited farewells as the train blazed past them. Fall had set in, and no one was picnicking, but there were geese. At first they honked and waddled as she'd seen them a week ago when Zoltan had chased them, but then, as the train passed, agitating them, they rose, as though connected to a single string. Soon the geese were flying in formation, like planes she had once seen in a schoolbook about Japan. The book told of kamikaze pilots, flying off to their suicide missions. How each scrap-metal plane and each rickety engine could barely stand the pressures of altitude, how each plane was allotted just enough fuel for its one-way trip. The pilots had made a pledge to the emperor, and they'd kept their promises. She remembered how she'd marveled when she'd read it, amazed that anyone would do such a thing; howin the all-knowing arrogance of youthshe'd been certain that given the same circumstances, she would have done something different.
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The Last Neanderthal Carl Auerbach
The Last Neanderthal

Carl Auerbach
A creature armed with symbolic skills is a formidable competitor, as H. Neanderthalensis has discovered to its cost. -lan Tattersall, Scientific American, 2003
Just because his mind was slow and his palate not well formed for language, we must not imagine he was without feeling, as he huddled there guarding the mound of moldy, ancestral bones to which he felt a troubling attachment although he would have had no words, even if his tongue could be twisted into speech. Watching those bewildering fast talkers, always one step ahead, or to the side, or somehow out of reach, he did not begrudge them the future they had won by being fitter. Indeed, he was gifted with a mute sense of fairness, that, together with his total lack of cunning, had already proved to be his undoing.
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They're Spun from Transparent Silk- Sharon Doyle
They're Spun from Transparent Silk Sharon Doyle

these lines of music-and we slide along them to places we never would have found: Splintered stages where a midnight sax riffs teenage; woody parks just now set free by a solo guitar; riverboats jazzed with party lights and French Quarter mandolins; stained glass aisles of confession and the rivers beneath them that blue-wash our sins; bugles-with-drum-that-cal1-to-arms; beergardens blend with accordions petitioning the takeover of Austria; circles of dust calling inside our heads the round dance turning always faster till we fall, gratefully, right next to-- of all things-a life-size harp parlored and powdered with sleep.
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driving towards nothing Becky Stockel
driving towards nothing

Becky Stockel
o there I was, driving through the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. I sat fully reclined in the drivers seat of my white 81 Ford Escort piece of shit excuse for a car with my head cocked to the left so I could feel my long ponytail on my bare arm. My left foot was pulled up so that it sat shoeless next to my right leg. My right hand was draped over the steering wheel, and my left hand was completely engrossed in its job of carrying my Marb Light from my lips to the window. In between taking drags I sang along with the Clash; they were blasting out of my stereo system at the time. This is how I always drive. I drive to think, to clear my mind, and all I could think about was how I was not paying attention. If something jumped out in front of my car, I wouldnt have had time to react. Not that I really needed to pay attention to the road; I was coasting through the farmlands of the Midwest. The only other being I was going to encounter on this drive would have been a stray cow crossing the badly cracked pavement in hopes of better grass to chew. At least I was hoping thatd be the worst Id see. If a damn cow did wander across the road at some point, Id have to do a lot of maneuvering. Id need time to get rid of my cigarette and throw down my left foot to work the clutch so that I could downshift quickly. Id definitely hit the cow. And I really couldnt afford to fix my car. I wasnt worried. Mick Jones had lulled me into a calm, hypnotized state hours ago and now I was just driving by habit, like a robot programmed to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Hours had gone bylong, monotonous hours of driving toward nothing. I left my very small hometown of Perrysville,
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Indiana around eleven that morning in search of something new, exciting, some sort of adventure, something to make it seem as if I had a reason for this impromptu cruise across the Midwest. At first, I just drove around the only town I knew, passing all of the places I grew up inthe white rock school building that held two hundred students, kindergarten through twelfth; my cute little Lutheran church with the white pillars in front and the tall bell-steeple; the red brick building that held the public library and the town hall. I drove out of Perrysville, out into the country and drove around the other little farming villages in the county, driving past the neighboring schools where I had competed in track and speech competition. I eventually just ended up driving straight out of Indiana, the only state Id ever known. I drove northwest through Illinois for a while. I drove into the setting sun into Iowa, and I finally understood what the middle of nowhere really was. I drove away from myself and my memories; I left it all behind in a moment. I left for adventure, and so far all Id gotten was corn. Not exactly what I was looking for. I lit another cigarette. * I remembered the way the late-summer breeze hit the back of my neck between my braids. I must have been fourteen or fifteen years old, cant really remember my exact age. I was young, nave, still pure in every sense of the word. Taylor and I had just come from an hour-long sermon at Our Saviors Lutheran Church; it was about resisting temptation. We were right at that age when church seemed more like a chore than a faith. We only went because thats what was expected of us. We always did everything that was expected of us. That Sunday afternoon, we were headed out to the middle of her stepfathers fields, ready to change that. We gotta see this, said Danny, Taylors older brother, coming up behind us. He was accompanied by their other brothers Clint and Jeremy, both of them also older than we were. I
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suppose we didnt really mind that they had tagged along. Besides, we figured witnesses to our actions might come in handy later. Yeah, sure, were heading out to the big rock, Taylor said. There was a rock about half a mile into the fields where we often went when we didnt want anyonemore specifically, any adultsaround. This time, it was really important that no one else saw the five of us head out there. Danny had just turned eighteen and he bought us a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes, and I was going to try my first one. I felt rebellious. I was about to break the law. It didnt bother me that we were smoking underagethe governmental law never bothered me, especially at fourteen. What mattered more was that we would be breaking the laws of the church, and the laws that our parents set down. We were taking control of our own lives. Up on the rock, I stood and looked out over the waving fields of wheat swaying in the light breeze. Even through my sunglasses my eyes squinted at the way the sun shone off the gold. I took a deep breath of the sweet smell of summer, ready to do something that I wasnt really supposed to do. It gave me a sort of rush, a freedom that couldnt be found within the conformities of the world I knew. I turned around, and Danny gave all of us cigarettes, and I watched as he, Taylor, Clint, and Jeremy lit theirs. Just inhale slowly when you light it, Clint offered with his classic crooked grin. He was so cute, I thought. I remember he was wearing the khakis that made his butt look so hot. He was my first crush, and Id do anything to impress him. When I was about twelve, only in the sixth grade, Taylor had invited me to sleep over. I saw him, the seventh grade god, for the first time and just about died. This is so cool, said Taylor. Im glad youre doing this with me.
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Wide-eyed and full of adrenaline, I put the cigarette carefully, loosely, delicately between my lips and watched as Taylor touched the end of it with the translucent green Bic she always carried with her. The first drag was nothing like what I had expected. There was no coughing or gagging, like you always see the kids on TV doing. It slid down my throat like silk. Did you just inhale? said Clint, with a look of mixed shock and admirationI had impressed him! Man, Ive never seen anyone inhale their very first drag. I cant believe Im smoking with you, said Jeremy, with big eyes. What did you think? asked Taylor. The four siblings were all getting a little giddy at this point, excited that they had roped another teen into the addictive world of nicotine. I felt like the tight grip my parents had on me loosened up. I could almost see the Virgin Mary and Our Lord Jesus Christ drop their jaws in shock. I smiled, eyes closed. Tastes like peanut butter, I said, and finished my cigarette in the sun. * Around ten, I decided to pull over and get some food, maybe even a map. That was just about the time all I wanted was to get out of the cornfields. I threw on my shoes and lit a new cigarette as I looked for a place to stop. I stepped out of my car at the next truck stop and took one last drag off my smoke, savoring the smooth taste before exhaling slowly and stamping the butt out on the ground. I walked into the small diner and looked around. The diner was one of those quiet joints with blue booths lining the windowed walls and a row of stools at a counter up front, lit entirely by harsh blinding fluorescent bulbs. The woman behind the register was short and chubby, with her silver-streaked brown hair pulled into a loose bun. She wore a peach colored dress with short sleeves
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and a light blue apron with a big pad of paper in the front pouch. I sat down at a stool by the counter and leaned over to read the nametag: Agatha. It was just like in all those old movies. Even though I had plenty of money in my pocket, I rifled through my change and asked how the pie was. The old woman behind the counter was less than amused. She wiped her hands on her apron as her mouth twisted into a snarl, Dont pull that crap with me. Pies $2.50. Dont matter if yer a fuckin homeless orphan. I put my sweat into that pie and yer gonna pay fer it. Just gimme a cup of coffee then. Black, I said, rolling my eyes. The pie probably tasted like shit anyway. I drank my coffee, looking around the diner for someone to watch for the next few minutes. The only other person in the place was an old man, probably the womans poor husband, wiping the tables and mopping the floor. I immediately felt sorry for the guy. He seemed like just the perfect wimp for the woman to boss around. He even stood hunched over, as if afraid she was going to throw something at him. She probably made him sit outside in a rocker on the front porch to smoke his nightly pipe. He probably didnt mind. I tried to keep myself occupied with watching the old man, but he just dipped the mop in his bucket and swished it around the black and white checker-tiled floor. I took my coffee to a back corner booth and sipped it slowly in silence, alone with my thoughts. Images of cool summer nights spent outside relaxing on a familiar roof floated through my head. * I remembered the first time I crawled through that window. We were barely sixteen years old, just licensed drivers and ready to take on all the independence it gave us. There was something magical about that night, in an eerily haunting way, like leaving part of myself behind forever, yet entering a new world. I remembered exactly the way Taylor looked when she got out on the roof and turned back for me. She had that giddy look she
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always got when we were rebelling together. You comin, Jo? Taylor asked expectantly, coughing. She laughed softly and explained, Sorry man, breathed in some spit or something. I smiled. I knew I had to follow her. My heart pounded, and I left her bedroom through the window and followed my friend up to the top of the house, nervous, worried that Id mess something up. Sure ya wanna do this? she asked. I looked at Taylors serious face and her big brown eyes. The moon shone off her waist length-red hair, creating a copper glow around her head. I could trust her; she was my best friend. Yeah, lets do this thing, I replied confidently as the last bit of childish nerves wore off. I watched as Taylor took an elaborately painted glass pipe out of her baggy jeans pocket and packed the bowl full of the weed wed bought earlier that day. I watched, silently, as Taylor closed her eyes, letting her long, dark lashes touch her high cheekbones; she was beautiful. She took the first hit, and passed the pipe to me with a smile. Just do what I did, she instructed. Dont laugh when I look stupid. I took the pipe in my left hand carefully, as if holding a robins egg. Taylor watched intentlyshe staredas I lit the bowl and inhaled deeply. As I did, my eyes closed slowly, and I held them shut while holding the first sweet breath of smoke in my lungs. It seemed like forever that I just stayed that way, eyes shut, sitting on the roof as the soft sounds of Tonight Tonight by the Smashing Pumpkins drifted out of the bedroom window below us. Sweet. The word slowly fell from my lips as I passed the pipe back. We finished off the rest of the bowl and lit up a cigarette each, drawing the smoke into our lungs and exhaling slowly into the starlit night.
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This must be heaven, Taylor said dreamily. If you believe in those things, I answered and we both giggled softly. So this is what Ive been missing out on? Yeah, man. I cant believe you just got high with me. The words came so slowly, like she knew the true meaning of peace. She was leaning on her left arm, facing me, and holding her Camel Light in her right hand. One strap of her army green tank top slipped down her arm, and her bare feet peeked out from the bottom of her paint-splattered jeans. I mirrored her up on that roof, except for the obvious differences: I was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed sort that seemed meant to be a cheerleader. I know if anyone heard about this, they wouldnt believe it. I smiled a lazy half-smile and took another long drag off my cigarette. Why is this stuff illegal, man? Ive never felt so. I sighed as my words melted away into the darkness. Peaceful? Taylor offered. Yeah, I feel like I could just lay here on your roof forever, and the stars would stay out and I would never have to do anythingeveragainI could stay here forever. Heres to forever, under the stars, Taylor toasted her cigarette. Heres to us forever, I added as we touched smokes. That was how I would always remember Taylor. * Is there anything else, miss? asked the old man. He had apparently finished the floor, and I had apparently finished my coffee. Oh, no thanks, I said, startled out of the trance I had been in. I should probably start heading out anyway. Where are ya headin? he asked. Nowhere in particular, I shrugged. He gave me a questioning glance as if it seemed strange for a girl in her early twenties with Indiana plates to just be driving aimlessly in the middle
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of Iowa. Havent you ever just needed to get out? Just leave and see what you find? Well, I spose then, its not so strange. I jest expected you to be with someone or on your way somewhere specific, he said slowly in a soft voice. Roger! yelled Agatha from somewhere in the kitchen. You finish them floors yet? Is she always like that? I asked without thinking. I suppose it was rude to ask a question like that of a complete stranger, but it didnt really matter to me; Id never see Roger or Agatha again. Besides, after so many hours alone in the car I guess I did want someone to talk to for a little while. Aw, Aggies awright, said the devoted husband. She comes across as a little hotheaded, but shes quite a gal. Im sure. I smiled, wondering if she was ever really nice to him. Roger! came her shrill voice from the back of the diner. What the heck are ya doin? See, when we were kids we had planned on running away, seeing the world, said Roger. We made plans for seeing all of Europe: Ireland, England, Germany, Spain, the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, all the great sights. He stopped to wipe his brow and give me a wink. It seemed so strange that a perfect stranger would just start talking to me like that. I felt like I had to continue the conversation with him. So what happened? We never went, he said, with a sad look. Couldnt come up with the money. But I did ask fer her hand in marriage. She was crazy enough to give up her whole life and family to run away with me, completely out of the blue. Cant let a girl like that get away. Thats kinda sweet, I told him as he walked with me up to the cash register so I could pay. ROGER! screamed Agatha from the back.
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Id better get going, I said. Umit was nice meeting you. Just remember, whatever youre looking for, you already have it, he said quietly as I left the diner. I paid him and walked out of the glass doors, listening to the jingle of the bells they had roped up to the handle. Back in my car, I kicked my black flip-flops under my seat and put the car into reverse. Back out on the highway, I started thinking about what Roger had said in there. Whatever youre looking for, you already have it? What did he know? He was looking for adventure and chose Aggie instead. Whatever. That had nothing to do with why I left town. I didnt even really know why I had left; I just needed to think a little. I couldnt do that in that tiny little town in Indiana, with its little white church with the steeple glaring me down all day. I couldnt stand that church, or the little pink and blue cottoncandy houses with their front porches, complete with gossiping old women on rocking chairs. It was all too quaint. It haunted me, even hundreds of miles away from it. I tried to push it out of my mind, as I had a million times since getting in my car this morning. I turned on the radio to what had been the alternative rock station when I left. Now it was some random country station, and some guy was whining about how his wife was making him choose between her and fishing trips with his buddies. He naturally chose the fishing. I decided to just leave it there for a while. I hated country music, but I didnt want anything that would let me have any thoughts deeper than those about cowboys or cheating hearts. Outside, the dark fields of corn were rushing by as I flew down the road. I looked at the speedometer; I was going almost ninety miles per hour. My best friend Taylor always told me that I had a lead foot, but she always drove the same way. * So how was it? The question fell from my lips uncer152
tainly. Taylor had just gotten back from the DMV, after her drivers licensing test. She walked in with her head down, looking defeated. I didnt know what to make of it. Did she fail? Before she answered, she started coughing a little and pounded on her chest with her right fist. It seemed at the time like she was coming down with a bad cold. I stood there anxiously, waiting for her to catch her breath. Should I be excited or sympathetic? She slowly lifted her head and half-grinned at me. So where you wanna go? she asked, holding out her newly acquired plastic. The left corner of her mouth curled up mischievously, the way it did whenever she got one of her Damn the Man crazy ideas. Lets blow off seventh and eighth. Nice, I said approvingly. It was crazy, but hell, we liked to think we were, too. How bout Country Kitchen? The owners dont care if we smoke in there. She nodded and slapped my hand. We told our teachers we had one of our many miscellaneous projects to do for one of the four art classes we took together, and left school. We got into her moms black 98 Cavaliershe said Taylor could borrow it for the rest of the dayand sped out to Country Kitchen, our usual hangout. It was the biggest dive our little town had to offer us, but we didnt mind if the place was always dirty, the waitresses were mostly rude, or the food wasnt always cooked rightif the dumbasses even got the order right. We could go sit there and talk about the shit we wanted to talk about over hot black coffee and cigarettes. The best part was that none of the other people from our school would ever show up there; it was mostly a daytime hangout for the nighttime drunkards, or a place that the students from the nearby community college could actually afford. We sat in one of the green booths in the back roomthe smoking sectionand ordered a pot of the sludge they call cof153
fee and two Diet Pepsis with no ice to start us off, and lit our cigarettes, even though Taylors cough was still very much a reality. But we didnt carewe were celebrating. So what was the test like? I asked. I wouldnt be able to take my test until just before summer vacation since I was still taking Drivers Ed. Were you nervous? It really wasnt all that bad, she replied through her coughs. I dont know why everyone complains so much about it. Everything that we do in class is on the test, and nothing else. Did he make you parallel park? I hate that. Yeah, between two garbage cans set up in the place of cars. Dont worry about it. It was pretty easy. I mean, youve seen me drive. If I can get a license, anyone can. Good point. She threw a piece of ice (from her drinkstupid waitress) at me, and we both laughed. God, youre always the first to do these things, I said to her. She always experienced things before me. She was the first one to kiss a boy, to drink a beer, to smoke a cigarette, to lose her virginity, and so on down the list. What are you talking about! she laughed. You got suspended from school for three days for smoking in the parking lot. I never did that! That was only because youre smart enough not to get caught, I told her. Well, someday youll have to do something alone. Her laughter faded a little, and she took a long drag on her cigarette. Yeah but we still have a few more years before we head off to see the world, I said uncertainly. The look on her face and the way she was coughing was making me a little nervous. And besides, well always have the future to start up our little bar somewhere. Well, if I cant, promise me youll still open it up. Name it
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after me. Jesus, Taylor! Is he here, too? she joked. Yeah, he comes and hangs out here when hes too wasted to drive home, I shot back, sarcastically, ignoring the strange way Taylor was acting. * The memories were rushing back too fast. They were eating at my mind, and I knew I had to think of something different before I broke down again. I looked back out at the cornfields, stretched out on miles upon miles of flat land that met perfectly with the black night sky. I put the Clash back in the CD player, threw my cigarette butt out the window and put my elbow on my knee and my head in my hand. All I could see around me was blackness, interrupted by the white stars and the full moon, and, in places, the flashing red lights of the television and radio towers. That combined with the fact that I was driving a stick and the lights from my speedometer, gas gauge, and radio were all emitting that neon green light. I felt like I was flying a spacecraft. I hate sci-fi movies and books. I just dont think that the prospect of discovering life on other planets is at all possible. Theres a good reason why we consistently make fun of Trekkies. But that night, flying in my Escort through the Iowa cornfields at night, I let my mind wander towards the idea. What if there was life on Mars? If there was, Im sure that their planets looked something like the Midwest at night. There was this intense feeling of being sucked into a black hole. Im sure thats what it felt like to live on another planet. Maybe this is why so many people claimed to be abducted by aliens; they were driving through cornfields for hours, and just completely lost it. It only seems natural that someones mind wanders toward the unknown when driving through the middle of nowhere. Maybe I was just going crazy.
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By this time, it was getting on towards one in the morning, and I had driven almost to Des Moines. I decided it was time to stop. There was a sign up ahead that said Pella 2 miles. It listed the motels that are usually found just about anywhere in the Midwest: Days Inn, Country Inn and Suites, Super 8, Motel 6. I pulled off the exit and settled on the Super 8. It was probably cheap enough for me to afford, at least. I contemplated going in barefoot, but those No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service signs that are posted on every small business door flashed in my head. Once upon a time, it wouldnt have bothered mebreaking the law was my hobby, I suppose. Now it just didnt seem like me. It was all in the past. I threw my sandals on and grabbed my keys, locking my doors behind me out of habit. I walked into the lobby through a set of automatic glass doors, and looked around. The couches were upholstered in tan leather, and I could tell that when they were new, they had been really nice. The floor was covered in that mint-green-bordered carpet with green vines twisting through light-pink flowers. It was that typical design that seems to be trademarked by every hotel, motel, and bed and breakfast across the country. They had a couple of coffee machines and some hot chocolate sitting on a counter at one end; there was a continental breakfast at least, a bonus for me. I turned around and walked up to the front desk. Do you have any rooms left for the night? I asked the middle-aged woman sitting behind the counter. She wore electric blue eye shadow painted on up to her eyelids, fake eyelashes, and bright pink lipstick to try to make herself look presentable and professional. Her puffy eyes had dark rings around them and her blonde hair was a bit frazzled. She, like the lobby couches, had seen much better days. I imagined three overactive kids, a lazy beer-gutted husband, and years of hard work turned her into the woman I was looking at then. Let me check, she said politely. Im not sure that well
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have anything open for you, but Id really like to help you out. You look like you need a bed and fast! This weeks Tulip Time, the worldwide tulip festival held here each year. We normally run out of rooms months in advance, its such a popular event. A tulip festival? I asked, disbelieving but still listening. Yep. People from all over gather here to celebrate Pellas Dutch heritage, she explained. They dress up in traditional costumes, theres a parade, and the historical village downtown simulates Old Dutch life. Theres street vendors and wooden shoes and dancers. And Centralthats our collegeperforms a play, and theres music, and oh! So much going on! You should go see the flowers while youre here. As she rambled, her voice got more and more animated. Tulip Time must be a big deal around here. Well, that sounds interesting, but Im just passing through, I explained. Oh! Your room! She suddenly remembered why I was standing there. It seems that I do have one opening, but its a non-smoking honeymoon suite. Its kind of expensive. If you dont want that, theres a small motel that isnt advertised out on the highway. Im not sure if you want to go there. Well, how much is this suite? I asked. I just had to get some sleep. It goes for $139.99 a night, she told me with a grimace. Its actually more like a two-room apartment. Its great for those less well-to-do folks who cant afford a real honeymoon, and popular with the kids on Prom night. Yeah, thats really not for me, I told her, cringing inwardly. So wheres this other place? Its just down the road here. Drive about three blocks and turn left at the Dairy Queen. Then just keep going past the hardware store. Youll find it on the right after an old historic red schoolhouse. Its kind of a dump, but its the only place with any rooms left this week. The Dutch apparently dont enjoy that sort
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of place. I nodded at her, curious yet hesitant about this old motel in the middle of nowhere. So why does this one have any rooms left? No tulips? She hesitated. Then she looked around to see if anyone was coming and leaned over the counter. Its kind of a rent-bythe-hour establishment, she whispered. I dont like sending people there, because it is a complete dive, but you look like you really need some sleep, and its really not that badafter all, were still in Iowa. Well thanks, I said. I guess Ill check it out, if its the only option left. Good luck, honey, the woman told me. I turned and walked slowly out of the Super 8. I really didnt care where I crashed for the night, as long as it wasnt in a ditch by the side of the road, which is where I would have ended up if I got back on the interstate. I left my shoes on for the drive over and wondered what I was getting myself into, scanning the signs of the other hotels just in case there might be a vacancy. All of them had those harsh red neon signs flashing NO VACANCY. So hateful. As I passed the Dairy Queen, I imagined coked-up whores with a pound of electric blue makeup over each sunken eyelid. I imagined them emaciated to the point where they made those posterchildren for third-world countries look fat. The difference was that the whores were dressed in stiletto heels, sequined backless tops, and miniskirts and were spending all of their money on drugs, whereas those poor kids didnt have any money or any way to earn it. I imagined all of the stars of an after-school special, only this time they arent saved from themselves just in time to turn their lives around and build a successful life at some business. The street I was driving down only emphasized the horrors I was imagining. Maybe it was just because I was tired, or maybe
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it was just because it was dark, but the houses lining the street seemed to all be boarded up and their roofs were caving in. Gray weeds had overrun the lawns and broken rockers were falling through the holes that seemed present in every porch. That woman at the Super 8 sure wasnt exaggerating when she said this was in a bad area. I was having a really hard time remembering that I was in Iowa, even if I was within forty miles of the largest city in the state. I saw the dilapidated building up ahead, styled like a saloon from a western movie. It had a wide, wrap-around porch with a once elaborately painted sign hanging crookedly from the eaves. The door was wide open, and a faint light was glowing from inside. The paint was chipped almost everywhere on the main building, and the doors looked splintered, from what I could see in the dark from my car. The rooms to rent were in three onestory buildings that formed a C-shape behind this main building. These three room buildings and the fancy saloon formed what should be a courtyard in the middle, but was really the parking lot, full of old, beat-up cars. I drove around behind the main building and slowly maneuvered my car perfectly between two imaginary lines, as the parking spots were not labeled on the cracked pavement. I hesitated before I turned off the ignition and stepped out into the night air. * I remembered that summer we spent on the road with our soccer team. About four years ago, Taylor and I made the areas Premiere team and spent the three glorious months before our senior year traveling the country, staying in some nice hotel rooms, and kicking some major ass. That was the year we revived The Bloodhound Gangs album One Fierce Beer Coaster and adopted Fire Water Burn and Going Nowhere Slow as our anthems and blasted them out the windows of the team bus as we won game after game on our way to the big international tournament in Rockford, Illinois. When we finally got to Rock159
ford, we immediately chose up hotel rooms and made plans for the night, since we had a few days until the tournament actually started. Taylor and I ended up rooming with these girls Emily and Sarah, the other two smokers and general bad girls on the team. So what are we doing tonight? I asked the other girls. Well, theres always the guys teams over at the Comfort Suites, said Emily with a smile. She was always thinking about boys, but at the age of sixteen, we all were. Sounds like a plan to me, Sarah agreed. Besides, I hear that one of the U-18 boys teams are throwing some sort of party tonight. Fine with me. Eighteen-year-old boys might come in handy tonight. Im almost out of smokes. Almost before the words left Taylors mouth, she started coughing horribly. Yeah, sounds like thats what you need, yelled Emily. Smoke another one, I pitched in, watching my best friend caught in a horrible coughing fit, pounding on her chest with one hand and giving us the finger with her other one. She tried to laugh with us, but it only made it worse, and soon she was rolling on the floor, hitting herself and kicking her legs around. We all laughed hysterically and started getting ourselves ready to the Bloodhound Gang that was blasting out of the boom box we had with us. When Taylor finally got up, she and I threw on our typical baggy jeans, tank tops, and flip-flops. We put on minimal makeupthe usual mascara and chapstickand pulled our hair into ponytails at the backs of our heads. Sarah put on a pair of shorts that could have fit a toddler and a sequined halter-top. Emily went all out with the short black skirt and a sparkly tube top. The amount of makeup and hairspray they used could have done up the whole team for a formal dance. Hey, when you girls are done whoring up, come join us on the balcony, Taylor yelled over her shoulder as she pulled me outside with her. Outside on the balcony, she pulled out her little
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glass pipethe one that she had introduced me to at the beginning of the summer. She took a small dime bag out of her pocket and started packing the bowl. By the time Sarah and Emily had sufficiently fluffed their hair and joined us on the balcony, Taylor and I were lit. High as a fucking kite. I sent a soft half-smile to the girls and held out the pipe. Sarah shook her head and waved it off. What the hell, man? asked Taylor, getting kind of angry. Thats some grade-A shit there. Ive never seen you turn it down. I just stared at them in disbelief through my half-closed eyes, shaking my head slowly. This was bullshit. These two were turning down some good shit, and what happens if they say something to one of our stuck-up prissy teammates? Or worse the coach? Hey, you guys arent gonna, be like I started. At this point, Sarah looked at Emily and pulled out a nicely rolled joint out of her purse. With a grin, Emily just leaned over and pulled my lighter out of my pocket and they sparked up. Fuck you, guys! Taylor laughed at them, coughing a little again. Id been telling her she was smoking too much lately, but we didnt really think too much about it. Taylor, you really gotta switch to lights, Sarah said with a sly grin. You gotta lighten up, too, Emily laughed as she exhaled the smoke she had been holding in her lungs. You were so freaked out. We laughed our teenage asses off at that, finished our dope, and headed off to the boys hotel. * I stepped out into the night air and walked up to the saloon. The old planks that made up the main steps threatened to collapse under my weight and I stepped quickly but carefully up to the door and walked in. It was like no hotel I had ever
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been in before. The floor was a dark hardwood, and the front desk sat in a small lobby. The guy sitting behind it looked wasted, and was wearing a pair of holey jeans, a black cowboy hat, and a T-shirt that said Britney Spears Sucks! with an arrow pointing towards his zipper. I could hear loud country music and drunken voices muffled by the two closed doors on either side of the desk. Um Hi... Someone said you guys had some rooms left tonight? I kind of asked the guy. Yeah He slowly drew the word out of his mouth as if he were totally confused as to why I was standing there. We got a bar in the back, too. So, can I get one of the rooms? I asked. You guys are the only hotel with any rooms left in this strange little town. Yeah, it is kinda strange Was he stoned or something? I just stared at him for a while, shaking my head. Im sure I was giving him my Are you some kind of an idiot? face. I must have stood there for five minutes before he reached behind him and grabbed a key off its hook. Here. Are you alone? Yeah, Im alone. I want to sleep. Just give me the room. Ya dont come here offen, do ya? Can I just have my room? Its been a long day. Ok, ok, ya dont have to get so pushy with me, he whined as he checked the book and recited, Its $29.99 a night for a single. Yeah, here, I said, giving him my credit card. Just put it on this. You do take credit cards, right? Yeah, we take any form of payment. Whered you come from? They not use plastic there? he said as if I asked him if he had a hat on. He rang me up and handed me a key. Youre in room number 18. Thanks, I mumbled. I was tired and just wanted to get into a bedany bedand forget that today ever happened.
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Ya know what? He turned to face me, perfectly straightfaced, staring straight into my eyes and forcing me to stare back. Ya know, someone ODd on meth in there last week. Iowas got a crazy number of meth labs. Ya do meth? What? I asked, dumbfounded. This guy was starting to creep me out. Uh no. I dont do meth. I prefer nicotine and caffeine. You guys got coffee here in the morning? I tried to answer as normally as I could. Thas too bad. I got some here if ya want, he offered, raising his eyebrows. I get off in an hour if ya be wantin some company, if you know what I mean. Thats perfectly all right, I think Im going to be ok, I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. Fine, just thought thats what ya were here for. Just then, a couple of half-naked drunkards came stumbling through the saloon door, hanging on each other. Thats why everyone else is here. Yeah, thanks, I shot back, and turned around and left. I was in no mood to deal with degenerate hicks like him or the others in the back room. * I remembered that soccer party. Comfort Suites room numbers 403 and 405, occupied by the Milwaukee Premier U-18 boys team. Emily led Sarah, Taylor, and I right on in as Green Day started belting out Welcome to Paradise on the stereo. I remember Clint, Jesse, Nick, and Chad offering us some beer and ashtrays almost immediately after we walked in. Those boys were quickly claimed for the four of us. I dont remember how we ended up with them, but I think Emilys skimpy outfit and her seasoned flirting skills had something to do with it. I remember the taste of beer on Chads tongue and the way his hands felt on my skin. I remember the way Jesse smiled at Taylor and laughed when she shot down all of his horrible pick-up lines. Free beer, cute boys, and a kick-ass party in a smoking suite. It seemed like
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we were in for a pretty good night. So where are you girls from? asked Clint when he handed us some longnecks of Bud Light. Perrysville, Indiana, said Taylor. Its about an hour and a half west of Indianapolis, Sarah pitched in when we saw the confused look on the boys faces. Cool, said Clint. U-18 team? Not quite, I answered reluctantly. U-16. Well, thats cool, said Jesse, smiling at Taylor. So, Taylor was it? She nodded, sipping her beer. Come here often? He winked at her. That has to be the lamest line Ive ever actually heard, Taylor told him. It may have been lame, but damn was he hot. And he could buy her more smokes. She smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. Shortly after downing a couple of beers, I saw Emily and Sarah pull Clint and Nick into some back rooms. They didnt waste any time. I could tell Chad and Jesse were thinking along the same lines, but neither Taylor nor I were interested in getting laid that night. We had to play the next day. I settled for a makeout session on the couch in the middle of the party, close enough to Taylor and Jesse that I could hear their conversation, but far enough away to really enjoy my new-found boy-toy-for-thenight. So I play the field, and it looks like Im gonna score a goal with you, I heard Jesse actually saying to Taylor. So I play defense, laughed Taylor, lighting a cigarette for herself and one for the boy. Damn! So did it hurt when you fell from heaven? Boys like you should just sit there and look cute. No more talking, she laughed, putting her finger on his lips. I was still on the couch exploring Chads molars with my tongue, and I had to pull away from him to keep from laughing.
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Ill be back, just going to get another beer, I told Chad and walked away to see what Taylor was up to. I saw Jesse take Taylors ponytail down and start to run his fingers through her hair. Im sure he was telling her how it reminded him of spun copper or something just as bad. Just as Jesse leaned in for the kiss, Taylor started coughing again. At first, it wasnt badjust a few hard from-the-lungs coughs. She seemed fine after a short moment and Jesse got his kiss. I stood there, thinking how cute it was. This guy wasnt like the usual guys Taylor went after. He was awkward, a little shy, and by far the worst conversationalist wed met in a long time and we were in high school. I started walking back to Chad on the couch with our two bottles of Bud Light when Taylor started hacking up a lung. She was thrown into such violent convulsions that Jesse began to panic, and people around her started to stare. Is your friend all right? asked Chad, coming up behind me. He seemed genuinely concerned for her, but maybe he was just concerned about his buddys chances of getting a piece. Yeah, I think shes fine, I told him, a little worried myself. I think shes starting to get a bad cold or something. She should lay off the cigarettes for a while, he suggested. Yeah, I said distractedly. Maybe we should go. Well, maybe well see you around, Chad told me. Can I walk you back? Jesse was asking as I approached. I think well be ok, but thanks, I answered. I took Taylor back to our hotel room and she got into bed. I was really worried that she was coming down with something. Shed been coughing a lot lately, but we passed it off as a smokers cough. She really did smoke way too much. Sometimes I even heard her wheezing when she breathed. And we were only sixteen years old. * I slowly made my way back to the car to grab my smokes
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and CDs, and then tried to figure out where room number 18 was. It turned out to be one of the rooms in the building all the way across the parking lot. This place only had forty-five roomsfifteen in each building. I walked past the first row, noticing that they all had the same matching red doors and a single window, curtains pulled tightly across them. Outside many of them was a can of some sort, full of cigarette butts. Great. A no-smoking whore hotel. The girls who work this area must be the kind who cares about their health. What an oxymoron. As I put the key into the door of room number 18, I could hear the sounds of a TV coming from room number 19. Across the way, I saw a girl who couldnt have been much more than eighteen pulling a middle-aged man in a business suit into a room. From where I was standing, I guessed it was room number 43. I walked into my room and locked the door behind me. I leaned with my forehead against the door for a while before turning around. What a day Id had. The stress and depression of the whole situation was eating at me like a worm in an apple. It just crawled deeper and deeper until my entire body was hollow and rotting from the inside out. It clawed at my mind and sucked the life right out of me. I was twenty years old, just a few months too young to drown the sorrows in a pint of beer. Not that a pint would have been enough. I turned on the floor lamp on the left side of the doorthe only light in the roomand looked around the room. As in the saloon, there was no carpeting, just more scratched wood. The walls were covered in gaudy, faded red wallpaper that was peeled away at the corners; in spots it looked like someone had tried to burn holes in it. The bed was a worn-out mattress without box springs, practically sitting on the floor. The dresser was made from the same dark hardwood that covered the floors of the hotels saloon and lobby area. There were deep white gashes and scratch marks where careless drunks had accidentally knocked their things into it. The TV sitting on top of it had no remote
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control, and looked as if it wouldnt work without aluminum foil attached to the long antennae protruding from the top of it. Worst of all, a perfectly white plastic sign was nailed to each of the walls, declaring NO SMOKING! to all who enter. I sighed and dropped my bag on the bed and watched it sink halfway into the old mattress. I sat down next to it, feeling the springs poke through the shabby cushioning. What a disappointment. At least it was a place to sleep. Somehow, this crappy hotel room felt like the perfect ending to my day. It was something I could deal withfor the night at least. It wasnt the worst thing Ive ever had to deal with. * I remembered when Taylor got back from the doctor. The summer of our sixteenth year was so hard on her. Her cough was getting worse and breathing was a chore. By the time our last soccer game came around, she couldnt even play for more than five minutes. We were both worrieda cold shouldnt last that long, even one of those horrible summer colds that people would only wish on their worst enemies. When the two of us were together, we joked about it, trying to make it seem like a natural thing, something that would blow over eventually. It couldnt be serious; she just smoked too much and her immune system couldnt kick this cold. Thats what we kept telling ourselves: we just smoked too much. So we laid off for a whileshe even quit altogether. I mean, we were sixteen and wed already been smoking for two years. Taylors parents thought differently; it wasnt just a cold to them. Im sure they knew that she smoked, and thats the only reason I can think of that they didnt act on their worries earlier. They probably assumed that the cigarettes had something to do with their only daughters ghastly wheezing. Like my parents, they were in some sort of denial about it though; if they didnt see it happen, they could ignore that their daughter was potentially killing herself slowly. But the worry was there, and that
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worry soon elevated into a deep apprehension that something was seriously wrong. So when Taylors coughing rapidly got worse instead of gradually better, and when after only a few months her breathing was labored like that of an emphysema patient three times her age, they took her into the local hospital to run some tests. Taylor stayed there for three days while the doctors looked at her lungs, and finally they called her mom and dad in to run one final test. When Taylor finally got out of the hospital, I went to see her at home. By that point, I was just as scared as her parents were. Her father answered the door when I rang the bell, his face drawn and pale, and his usually cheerful tone traded for one more somber and quiet. Hello, he said slowly. Taylors in her room, lying down. You can go on up. I passed Taylors mom as I was walking up the stairs. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and I knew that whatever Taylor had, it was worse than we had ever imagined. When I entered her room, Taylor was just sitting in her bed, staring at the Jim Morrison poster she had on the wall. I didnt know what to say to her. Taylor? Hey, Jo, she said quietly. They found out what it was. Yeah? Then they can fix it? I asked hopefully. Its cystic fibrosis, Jo, she told me matter-of-factly. She turned her head to look straight at me. Theres no fixing it. Its genetic, but none of the symptoms showed up until this past year. But hey, the average life expectancy for someone with CF is thirty-two. Who wants to live longer than that? I could feel the color completely drain from my face. My best friendthe only person in the world I was close to, the only one who really knew me, was seriously sick. What if she died? They told me I got two defective genes when I was born. One from each parent. Thats the only way to get it, she
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explained slowly, with a far-off look like she wasnt even on the same planet as me, let alone in the same room. They didnt even know they were doing this to me. No one ever gets tested, the doctors said. Like thats going to make me feel better? They didnt know, I repeated stupidly. It was still sinking in slowly. My lungs are flooded with mucus, and they always will be, until it suffocates me, or some disease decides that my lungs are a great place to live. Did you know mucus is a great home for bacteria? Her bitter sarcasm was really hard to take. No, I whispered, fighting back tears. I didnt know. So, yeah, she spat out, getting angry. It probably doesnt help that Ive been smoking for two years now. You know, most kids know from early childhood when they have this fucking disease. If I had known then, Id be ready for all this. I would have grown up with it. I would never have started smoking. The power of her last statement really hit home. All those cigarettes, all this time. We were still kids, and she couldnt breathe. All that smoking could only have made matters worse. And why did we even do it in the first place? To rebel? God, we were fourteen! There were so many other things we could have done to get back at the church, at our parents! After a moment, I realized that Taylor had gotten up and she was holding me, completely supporting my body as I sobbed loudly for her. I looked at her and saw the tears silently streaming down her face. Jo? she asked me. Yeah? Im scared. * I sat up in the bed, wiping tears from my cheeks. I quickly hopped up and sighed loudly, trying to remember to breath. I ran into the tiny bathroom and splashed some water on my face
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before turning around and walking back outside. I needed a smoke before I went to bed. Outside, I lit up and slid down the door with the first exhalation. Across the parking lot, the teenage whore was leaving room number 43 and walking on to her next trick. I wonder what it was like for girls like her, staying up all night sleeping with complete strangers to pay the rent on some shitty apartment. What happened to drive them into a life like that? What kind of pain had they endured to make them so completely numb to what they were doing to themselves? It had to have been something bad. Or maybe they were just that desperate for drug money. After all Id been through in the past four years, I felt like I could honestly take up their profession and feel nothing. No regret, no sorrow, no pain worse than Id ever experienced before. Nothing even close. So there were a few riskswhat did it matter? What did I have to care about? I remembered a time I would have sat outside that same crappy motel room and looked up into the black sky and commented on the way the stars seemed to sparkle. I would have noticed the fireflies blinking in the distance, and the sounds of the crickets behind the saloon. Everything would have some beauty in it, something magical. Everything would make me smile. Now, all I noticed was the way the disgusting gray-white ashes from my cigarette were falling on my bare feet and the smoke curled carelessly around my head. All I saw was a sickening cloud of death. All optimism, all cheerfulness, all that I had of life was gone. I was not the same person that I was even yesterday. I closed my tired eyes and let my mind drift back to that mornings events. * I remembered the way Taylor looked up at me. It was a little creepy, seeing her there in her black slacks and a white, frilly
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blouse. Taylor never dressed like that on her own. I stood over her, staring back into her deep, unblinking eyes. She looked happy, peaceful, for the first time in almost a year. I knew this day would come, but I was having a really hard time coming to grasp with the fact that it was happening already, so soon. After her twentieth birthday in February, Taylor had given me a big hug and slipped her pipe into my pursethe first pipe I smoked, the one that was shared only by the two of us. I found it later, when we were sitting around in her bedroom, going through her birthday cards and talking about the upcoming year. I was going through my purse, and I saw the blue glass sitting on the bottom. I pulled it out and just looked at her quizzically. How did this get in here? I asked her. Im giving it to you, she told me. Her gaze never broke mine, but I could tell she was having a hard time keeping her composure. Theres something I have to tell you. I froze. Taylors lungs were failing fast, and there were only two things she could tell me. One was that she was accepted for a double lung transplant and they found a donor. The other was not as pleasant. I I was turned down, she said, breaking down into tears. It Its the smoking. Theyre willing to to let me let me die because I smoke. It was the worst news she could get, let alone give me. That night was a long one. We stayed up on the roof, talking about our lives, and got high one last time. We made it official by playing Mary Janes Last Dance because she grew up in an Indiana town. It at least brought a smile to her face. It was a fitting night, considering her last day wasnt so far off. After that, we spent more and more time lying around her room, and spent less and less time talking about life. We talked about death until both of us felt like we were dead. She said she was fine, that she wasnt scared. I tried to be supportive and see things her way, but I was terrified. We had stopped going to
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church years ago, and possibly never really believed in any type of religion. Once she was dead then what? I asked the same question that morning. I was looking down at her, and her eyes were pointed right at me, but I knew she couldnt see me. She couldnt hear me as I told her how much she meant to me, that she was my best friend, my soul mate. I felt the true weight of those words that morning. She was gone, and I was alone. I leaned down to kiss her cheek, holding her stiff, frozen hand, and said goodbye forever to her, to my small town, and to the life I knew.
*
Outside room number 18, I drove my cigarette into the ground until my knuckles were cut and bleeding, and threw what was left in my pack into the parking lot. I wanted nothing more to do with them. They cost my friend her life, even if it was in an indirect way. Why did you have to ruin everything? I screamed at the scattered tobacco as the tears came harder. Why did you have to take her? Why her? I crawled back into the room and let myself fall on the floor, with the door still open. I buried my face in my arms and pulled my knees to my chest and sobbed. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pipeTaylors blue glass pipethat I had with me for comfort. I knew I couldnt just forget. I couldnt just pretend that everything was fine, that life would go on. I couldnt just lie to myself and believe that my life wasnt completely intertwined with Taylor. Tomorrow I would have to go back home, back to the church, back to the rock in the field, back to Taylors roof. I would have to go back to all of the places where we used to talk and laugh, blowing smoke rings into the sky. And I knew that the first thing Id do was pick up a pack of Marlboro Lights.
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That was all I had to remember life the way it was meant to be the way it was with Taylor. That was all I had left.
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Avatar Mitchell Metz
Avatar
Mitchell Metz
If salvation writes itself down, I am illiterate. The body is all, and heaven must saturate me cell by cell. Hell, I'd found sanctity in strained sinews, slapshots, bruised wombs, hair shirts, orgasms, but never Christ ... until you signed the homily. That Sunday your small, sure hands manipulated into me the Word. Like a letterless penitent who grasps at icons, relics, cannibal communion -chasing the unconscious biology of belief, so I craved your carnal palms, pivot of wrists, the motive geometry of knuckles; the ebb of your pelvis, shoulder shrugs, sternum's spread, and mute mouthings -coupled, all, in full body-contact ballet. You've become my Salome and the vulgar idiom of your dance delivers me God's head on a platter, saves my skeptical ass from the vain faith of intelligence. Now every morning is Easter and I am in you. When you come, your fingers flutter ecstasy, speak in tongues.
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13 Days in a Rice Chest Nathan Nass
13 Days in a Rice Chest

Nathan Nass
Rice Chest, Palace Lawn, Picnics Do this for honor Kill yourself. Kill yourself fast. Heads of eunuchs for the princess. Wooden weapons for the naked boy Who did not become the man that He became two He became his fear of clothing And his coffin Or the hole in the ground Where he also slept. So you had no choice But to seal him in the rice chest He was unable to do it himself. Besides, what would Confucius do if A boy forsook him for madness? Hes wrestling with his clothes again. The sweltering days Its July already, isnt it. What will you tell him The next time hes lying before you, And his tears soak your robe? Kill yourself. Kill yourself fast.
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Nocturnes on Cassette Nathan Nass
Nocturnes on Cassette
Nathan Nass
to play bloch's baal shem even from decayed tape when the sun is showing the map of its blessed intestines or as the pressure suddenly decreases with dry darkness and pin holes are moving like radio static across our own impaired field of vision lifts us as when moses handed the torch to the turbulent future and it did not even flicker as sometimes happens when light makes its way through eons
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Good Girl Liz Nicklos
Good Girl
Liz Nicklos
o one day I was tardy to U.S. History class with Mr. DeCarlo, its right after lunch, see, and all my friends and I always take my little green Neon to Sonic to get the high school special, a cheeseburger with mayonnaise, no onions, fries and a vanilla Dr. Pepper. Were usually on time, but Nicole told me, Katie, your pants are black in the back! and I freaked out because they were brand new and I spent 80 dollars on them, and I looked at my butt, and there was this black dirt all over it, probably from the dirty chairs in my woodworking class. So I had to run home and change, thats why I was late to Mr. DeCarlos class, because Im not usually late, you know? Im a pretty good girl, although Ive only gotten Bs this year, and maybe a couple of As in woodworking, but woodworking is easy as long as I wear low cut tops and lean over when Mr. Torrez shows me how to make a dove tail joint. Im pretty good about being on time, and not missing school, even though Ive been doing this a lot more lately, you know, because after tennis practice, I smoke with Loni and Christa, and they dont really care about school, you know? Theyre not good girls, like mom would say. But Ive kind of liked hanging out with them, because I think every good girl has a bad side, and my bad side likes smoking cigarettes in my short tennis skirt by the recycling bins in the parking lot of the park where we practice. So when I came into class late I thought it wasnt a big deal, because Loni and Christa do it all the time, and this was only my third time with Mr. DeCarlo, so I thought it would all be fine, see, because hes a pretty hip young guy and he looks like Bert from Sesame Street, you know, long face and big nose. So I strolled in late with my little red Capri pants on, and everyone looked at me and I smiled because I knew that they all were thinking that I had been out with Loni and Christa, smok-
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ing on the picnic table by the bus loop, but I hadnt really, I had just been at my house, changing my pants, but who needed to know that? So I smiled and leaned over to Nicole to grab a pencil from her book bag, because Nicole always has the coolest pencils with huge fluffy pink balls on the end. Then Mr. DeCarlo came to my desk and said, you missed the quiz, Katie, and I said, oh, well Im sorry Mr. DeCarlo, but I can make it up right after school. And he said, you stay after class and well see. So I took notes and stared at the back of Tate Grahams head, who is this really hot guy who I used to share crayons with in elementary school, who used to eat paper to make me laugh, and then the bell rang. Everyone left but me and Mr. DeCarlo erased the board for like five minutes before he turned around to me and said, well Katie, how bad do you want to make up this quiz? And I said real bad Mr. DeCarlo, and I added that I was sorry for being late, its just that I had some personal business to take care of. I said that to make sure that he knew I was a good girl, and then he smiled at me real slowly so I knew he knew I was a good girl. Then he sat down real slow in his chair and rocked back, and I thought that maybe this was a little weird, because Mr. DeCarlo is never so slow and silent in class. He always talks in class, you know, about World War this and Germany that, and Government this and Politics that, and makes real big sweeping motions with his arms when he says the word well. So I swept my arms and said, well Mr. DeCarlo, I should get to class, and I started to walk out, and I said, so Ill see you after school, then. He got up and said, how bad do you want to make up that quiz, and I was like, umm, I just told you real bad. And he said why dont you show me? And then he came out from behind the desk and started to unzip his khakis, and I thought maybe this was happening because of all the times I had stared at his crotch during class, not because Im a bad girl or anything, but just because Im curious, you know? And good girls are always curious, so I shouldnt feel bad about that, but I have to admit that
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part of me always thought Mr. DeCarlo was cute and wondered what his thick black hair felt like. So I didnt know what to do because I really needed to make up the quiz because my mom would freak out if I didnt get at least a B in this class, so I asked him, how do I show you? And he went to the door of the classroom and locked it and said, you know how to show me. And I said, Mr. DeCarlo, Im a good girl, I dont do these things. And he said, yes, Katie, he grabbed my elbows right then, you are. And when he grabbed me, I wasnt scared at all, even though it reminded me of the way my moms ex-boyfriend Rob always grabbed me when he was drunk, but that was because he wanted to throw me down, and Mr. DeCarlo didnt want to hurt me, I could tell. And then I thought now I know why Mr. DeCarlo always makes the girl with the shortest skirt write the answers on the board, and why when he hands out tests he goes down every row so he can look down our shirts, and then I wondered if Loni and Christa would do this, and the answer was yes. So I put down my US History book and got on my knees in front of him, and he pulled his, you know, out and I almost laughed at how silly it looked, but I didnt because I knew from what Loni and Christa had told me that you arent supposed to laugh, youre supposed to use your tongue, not your teeth, and make a lot of moaning noises, but I decided that was too much, so I didnt moan. I kept my eyes closed the whole time, and I didnt really know what I was doing, but he told me that it felt good, that it felt real nice, and I was happy about that, but I got distracted by his hands all over my body and so I must have hurt him because he jerked away really fast and turned away from me. I said Im sorry even though I didnt know what had happened and he pulled up his pants and said, you should go now. I thought, well, I hope that counts for making up the quiz, and I picked up my books and said, so Ill see you tomorrow in class, and left. After tennis practice I told Loni and Christa what happened and they told me that they knew DeCarlo was a nasty ass
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pervert. And I was surprised because I thought that they would be happy that I was on my way to being a bad girl like them, but I guess they dont like that he chose me, because I heard Loni say that she would do him if she had the chance, so I told Loni youre just jealous, and she threw down her cigarette and didnt say anything. The next day after class I stayed again because Mr. DeCarlo said in front of the whole class, even though I wasnt late, that I still owed him time from yesterday. So I stayed and he locked the door again, and this time he didnt unzip his pants so I thought maybe he would kiss me. But he didnt, instead he told me to come here so I went over to the desk and he told me to lift up my shirt, and I said, what? And he said, lift up your shirt. And so I lifted up my shirt because I really did have a cute bra on. Then he said, get out of here, and I said, already? and he said get out of here. I stayed again the next day, not because he asked me to, but because I wanted to ask him why he didnt kiss me, because I was starting to like the thought of Mr. DeCarlos hair in my fingers. Besides, I knew Loni and Christa would flip, really flip, if I kissed him, so he was erasing the board and I said why didnt you kiss me yesterday, and he said because its not appropriate and I said no offense but neither was that other stuff, and then he laughed and turned around came around the desk and I got real nervous, not because I didnt know what to do or anything. I mean, Ive kissed boys before, but nothing like this, nothing like a History teacher with thick black hair, and then I thought of my first kiss with David Ketchum, and how he cornered me in gym class while everyone else was playing with those little four wheel scooters, and Mr. DiPrince yelled at him because he pressed me to the dirty-looking beige wall and stuck his tongue in my mouth, so he didnt get recess for the rest of the week, but I didnt tell Mr. DiPrince that I really liked it. So Mr. DeCarlo took my face in his hands and I didnt have time to be nervous, so I closed my
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eyes, and he bent down to kiss me, and it tasted like coffee and scope, and I liked it, and then before I knew it, his hands were up my shirt and I liked that too. And then my shirt was off and I was in the corner against the white concrete wall, just like with David Ketchum, except no gym class and no slobber. And then he was kissing me all over, even on my chest, and I didnt know what to think because the most Ive done with a boy is let him cop a feel while were making out, and Ive only made out with two boys. But I didnt really want to stop, because Mr. DeCarlos head was right where I could put my hands in his thick black hair, and then my pants were off too and I thought I am really glad that I wore my cute red underwear with the bows at the hips, but it really didnt matter because pretty soon they were off, and I didnt really know how to feel about being naked in front of my history teacher, but I didnt have time because he was rubbing and kissing and his hands were everywhere, on my butt, on my chest, and I could tell he liked what he saw, and when he touched me you know, down there, there was a rush of noise in my ears but I couldnt hear anything, and then I remembered this time I went to a Christian rock concert at the college gym, and how my ears felt after I walked out, how I felt like I was submerged in a tank of water. Thats how it was when Mr. DeCarlo touched me, but not scary, like it was after the concert when I thought I was deaf. And then I opened my eyes and we were on the couch behind his desk and he was above me, and even though I hadnt done it before I had watched a lot of movies, and so I put my hands in his hair and he looked at me and said youre beautiful. And I swear, I felt like I was in a movie, because Ive seen a lot of movies, and even though I didnt know what I was doing I knew what would happen next, and I kept my hands in his hair and thought so this is what its like to be a bad girl. The next day I told Loni and Christa that Mr. DeCarlo was a good kisser and Loni crossed her arms and placed her cigarette on her pouty lower lip and said, are you screwing him? And I
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said screwing him, what do you mean screwing him, and put my hand on my hip, and even though I was being sarcastic to try to get them both to lighten up, I dont think they appreciated it, because Christa said, its one thing to talk about screwing teachers and another thing to screw teachers. So I ashed my cigarette on the asphalt and said, he told me Im beautiful, and Loni said, was that before or after you two fucked, and I didnt like that she called it that, because thats not what it was and I should have said something really witty right then. But instead I threw my cigarette into the grass and gave them a nasty look. They looked at each other and then looked at me and sneered, if thats what you call that sort of look that says Im better than you, you know, the type of look that your younger sister gives you after she tells on you, and I sneered back and walked home. That night at dinner my mom asked me how classes were going and like I always do I said fine, and she asked just fine? And I said fine. She was dumping macaroni and cheese on my plate and she asked me how I liked my teachers and I said I liked them all, especially Mr. DeCarlo, and then my sister Jenn said, oh my God, you have Mr. DeCarlo, the gorgeous history teacher? And I said yeah, and then mom said what does he look like, and I said well he has thick black hair and a long face and a long nose, and hes pretty buff. And my mom said really, and she looked at Jenn and Jenn nodded and said yeah. Mom stabbed some macaroni on her fork and said so when is parent teacher conference night, I need to meet this guy, and Jenn laughed and Mom laughed too, but I didnt laugh because I was thinking hes mine, but I couldnt tell Mom that. Mom must have seen my face because she asked whats wrong, and I had to lie because if mom even knew, she would think I was a bad girl, and right now, Mom thinks Im a really good girl, you know, especially because after Rob picked up and left, mom blamed Jenn, you know? Even though it wasnt Jenns fault, Mom blamed her for Rob leaving us, but we all knew how Rob got when he was drunk, so it didnt
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really matter to me that he left, he always sat at my tennis matches and counted how many serves I missed and that was annoying, so I was ok with it, but for awhile Mom was mad at Jenn. And shes still sad, I guess, because shes been alone for a while now but I didnt ever think that she would go after one of my teachers, especially Mr. DeCarlo. So I said no, nothings wrong mom, and she said ok honey, could you pass the green beans? Mr. DeCarlo and I started meeting after school, you know, because I always had forty minutes until tennis practice started, and he just told the other teachers that I was having a lot of trouble in history and I needed to get one-on-one tutoring. Then one day Mr. DeCarlo said we have to stop this, and I said why, and he said my wife is pregnant, and I said, your wife. He crossed his arms and leaned back real slow in his chair and said, yeah, my wife, and then I laughed because he had to be joking, because he said I was beautiful and that I was such a good girl, and he must love me, so how could he have a wife? And so I said you never mentioned a wife, and he smiled and said would it have stopped you? And I said, what makes you think it will stop me now, and he was surprised at that, you know, and even I was surprised at that, because I sounded like a 20-year old must sound, and Im only 16. He said, no, I just cant do it anymore, because she wants me to come home earlier to be with her, and I said, well we can meet at other times. He said, no we cant, it just isnt a good idea, and Im surprised that we havent been found out yet, he shook his head then and said Mrs. Blevens asked me the other day why my door was locked, and I had to lie and say I left early. And then it occurred to me that he was dumping me, so I asked him, Mr. DeCarlo, are you dumping me? He got up and came over to me and said we both know this has to stop, and he rubbed my arms up and down like a father should do to his daughter, and it just felt wrong, and I said, Mr. DeCarlo, I think Im in love with you, and he hugged me and said, no no no, and I
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said yes, and I looked up and he kissed me and I had his shirt unbuttoned. He couldnt stop it, then, and then we were over on the couch, my hands in his black hair again, him telling me Im beautiful, and I said you dont want to stop this, and he kissed my neck, and then there was a rattle at the door, and he covered my mouth with his hand. Mr. DeCarlo? the janitor yelled, and then we heard keys jingling and Mr. DeCarlo yelled, just a minute Sam, and we jumped up and started putting our clothes back on, but before I even had my pants buttoned Sam opened the door, and as soon as he saw my bra his eyes got really wide and he said, Jesus Christ, and all I could think of was every time I had said hello to Sam in the hall while he was mopping, and then I felt bad because he must have thought I was a really good girl, but not now. Mr. DeCarlo said, Sam this isnt what it looks like, but before he could say this, Sam shut the door and we heard his keys jingle as he went away, and Mr. DeCarlo started cussing a lot, saying every single word I had ever heard bleeped out in rap songs on the radio, and I said what are we going to do, and he looked at me and said we? he said it really slow, we? what are we going to do? and he was really mad, I could tell, and before I could say anything he said get out of here, Katie, and I knew he meant it, so I grabbed my bag and went to the bathroom to change into my tennis skirt and tank top. After tennis practice I decided to smoke with Loni and Christa again, even though I wasnt going to after what happened the other day, you know, because I wanted them to apologize. Because Im not usually the type of girl who takes crap from people, but after what happened with Mr. DeCarlo I felt like maybe a cigarette would be good, you know, and maybe they felt bad. They didnt say anything to me for about five minutes, but then Christa said, hey Katie, how big is Mr. DeCarlo, and she turned to Loni and they grinned at each other, and I didnt say anything for a minute, you know, I just smoked my cigarette, took a big drag and let it out real slow, and then I said we got caught today.
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Christa said, no shit, and I said, yeah, and Loni said, by who, and I said by Sam, and I told them how the door was locked but he probably needed to clean or something, and how I was half naked when he opened the door, and Mr. DeCarlo was too, and how Sam said Jesus Christ and slammed the door and left. Christa and Loni just stared at me with their hands on their hips and their mouths wide open, and then Christa said, that sucks, and Loni said, no shit, and I said, what do I do, and Loni shook her head and said you better get on your bony ass little knees tonight and pray to God that Sam just whacks off about it and doesnt tell anybody. The next day I saw Sam in the hall and I decided to go up to him, so I said, hi Sam, and he said hello, and then his eyes got real narrow and he said, oh, hi, and I said Sam can I talk to you for a minute? I was thinking if Sam just knows that Im really a good girl, he wont tell anyone, and then Mr. DeCarlo wont be mad, and we can be together. And I was thinking it wouldnt be too hard to convince Sam that I am a good girl, because I am, right, because every girl has a bad side, and it just so happens that my bad side has progressed from smoking cigarettes in a short tennis skirt to having an affair with a history teacher who has thick dark hair. So I said, Sam it will just take a minute, and he said, dont you have class, and I said I can be late, Sam, I need to talk to you. So Sam the janitor followed me out to the picnic tables by the bus loop, and I thought while we were walking that Sam is actually a nice looking old man, with gray curly hair and leathery skin that turns red when he gets hot, and he wears those blue coveralls that car mechanics wear with his name on the right pocket in cursive. So Sam followed me out to the picnic tables and I offered him a cigarette and he took it, and he narrowed his eyes when he lit it and I said, Sam, I think you know why I wanted to talk to you, and he was silent, looking down at his feet, and I said, Sam, I need you to promise me that you wont tell anyone about what you saw yesterday. He looked up at me and
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opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out, and I thought for a minute maybe the reason that Sam became a janitor is because he cant talk to people very well, or maybe he doesnt like to. I said, Sam, and he said, yes, and I said, promise me you wont tell, and I took a long drag off of my cigarette and I noticed that Sam kept glancing at my chest in the cute halter top I was wearing, and I pretended I didnt notice, and he started alternating looking at my chest and then at his feet, and then taking a drag with narrow eyes, and then he looked straight at me and said, I just dont think its right, and I asked, right? and he said it again, but slower, I dont think its right, and I laughed and knew what I had to do, so I said, Sam, I could show you something that is right, and he didnt say anything but I could tell from his narrow eyes that he was interested, so I put my hands on my hips and pushed my chest out farther. I was late to class, anyway, right, so I might as well be really late, and fix this situation for Mr. DeCarlo, so I said, come with me Sam in the most bad girl way I knew how, and he stamped out his cigarette and I walked towards the big row of evergreen trees that surround the school, and he followed me, and I didnt say anything, I just unzipped his coveralls and then when I was done I got up and zipped his coveralls and said, so you promise me, Sam, he nodded. I told Mr. DeCarlo after school that I talked to Sam and that he promised me he wouldnt tell, and he said how do you know, and I leaned over his desk and said, I took care of it, and smiled, because he didnt need to know that I had been a bad girl, because to him I was a very good girl. A beautiful good girl. I leaned over to kiss him and he said no and I said what, and he said, no, we cannot do this anymore, we are going to get caught by someone who will tell. He said we lucked out with Sam, and I said, then meet me outside of school, and he said, what, you are crazy, and I said, Im crazy because Im in love with you, and he said, what do I have to say, he got up then, what do I have to say to make you understand we cant do this anymore, and I said yes
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we can, and he said, well then I dont want to do it anymore, you know, he emphasized the want. I said you dont mean that, you love me just as much, and he said, no I dont, and I started to think that maybe he was serious, and if he was, this could be bad, because I didnt want to have a broken heart, you know? Ive seen my mom get brokenhearted over too many men, and I didnt need that, or want it, you know, the nights over the toilet bowl, puking my guts out, and the crying for hours. I said, are you trying to break my heart, and he said, if thats what it takes, and then it got real silent and I got really mad. He just looked at me and said, it stops now, and I tried to kiss him then, see, because usually he couldnt resist that, because he told me I was a very good kisser, but he just pushed me away and I fell on the floor, and he didnt come to pick me up. So I went to the principal and said I need to talk to you about Mr. DeCarlo, its very important, and I had a tissue in my hand, you know, for effect, and I made sure to wear a short skirt and one of my lowest tank tops. I made myself look really sad, and I said, it will only take a minute, Mr. Ozzello, thats his name, and Mr. Ozzello pushed up his black framed glasses and said, well Katie, I suppose, and I wondered for the hundredth time why Mr. Ozzello didnt just get rid of his combover and buzz his whole head. I thought, maybe, if he did that, he wouldnt look so uncomfortable all the time, you know, because hes always standing at the counter that looks out into the commons where all the students stand, and he always looks at the kids walking around, and sometimes I see him cringe, so I dont think he likes us very much. So I sat down in the chair opposite his desk and said, Mr. Ozzello, I I and then I started to sob. He didnt get up from his desk, but I didnt expect him to, and he said really flatly, whats wrong Katie? And I said, its Mr. DeCarlo. He He I bent over my knees and put the Kleenex up to my face. Mr. Ozzello got even more uncomfortable and then the secretary came on and said you have a phone call, Oden, and he said,
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thank you Maria, can you take a message? and she said yes Oden, and I thought I didnt know his name was Oden, and he said, thank you Maria, and I noticed that his voice got a little bit happier when he said Maria. And then I thought maybe Mr. Ozzello and Maria were, you know. But then he turned back to me and said, now, Katie, what is the matter. I said well Mr. Ozzello, I wasnt going to tell anyone about this, but, I stopped there to sigh and look up at the ceiling, and then I continued again, but something terrible happened. And he said, yes Katie, so what is it? And I said, well, the other day in history class, Mr. DeCarlo asked me to stay after class to make up a quiz, because I was late, you know, and Mr. Ozzello nodded and put his elbows on the desk, and pushed up his glasses again. Well, I stayed after class and I just felt kind of odd, and all of a sudden Mr. DeCarlo came up to me and started to feel me all over, and he was pushing up against me, and I was telling him no and trying to resist him, but he backed me into the corner, and he I paused and looked back into my Kleenex and realized I could hear Mr. Ozzello breathing. He said, Yes? and I said, he you know. And then Maria came on the intercom again and said, Oden, you have Mr. Addington on line 2 and he jumped and pushed the button real fast and said, thank you Maria, but youll have to take a message, Im occupied with a student. And she said, yes Oden, and I thought how funny that he said he was occupied with a student. Then he looked back to me and said, Well, continue. I blew my nose and dabbed my eyes, and said I told you, he took advantage of me, and then Mr. Ozzello pushed his glasses up again and said, Well. And I said, well? And he said, Katie, thats a pretty serious thing. And then I thought that maybe I didnt wear a short enough skirt, or a low enough top, because Mr. Ozzello sure wasnt being swayed by anything that he was seeing. He said, I think you need to sleep on this, and think about whether you really want to bring this up, and I said, what? He pushed up his glasses again and leaned over and said more softly, this would
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look very bad for the school. I said, what? He said, just think about this a little more before you start accusing someone of something rather and then he trailed off and I sat there with my mouth wide open. Because, I mean, why wasnt he upset? So after what seemed like forever and a day I said, well, thank you Mr. Ozzello, and I dont think he sensed the sarcasm in my voice because he said, youre welcome Katie, thank you for coming in. So the next day after tennis practice I told Loni and Christa that Mr. DeCarlo didnt want to see me anymore, and they laughed, and I put out my cigarette and said its not funny, and Loni said, yeah, you know why? and I asked why, and Loni said, because Christas screwing him now, and I thought she was joking, so I asked Christa, and she just smiled at me and took a drag off her cigarette. I said, youre kidding right, and she blew her smoke in my face and said, yeah, and hes big, and she said it so that she emphasized big, and Loni laughed and started jumping up and down, and I said, you bitch, and Loni laughed and Christa said, yeah, well, he likes it. So the next day I skipped tennis practice and looked up Mr. DeCarlos address in the phonebook and drove there in my little Green neon, and it was a nice white house with blue shutters and there were big pots of purple geraniums on the steps to the porch, and I thought so this is where he lives, and I wondered what his wife was like. I sat there forever in my car, across the street and I just watched the curtains inside the shutters, you know, waiting to see if she would look out, and then Jessica Simpsons new song came on the radio and I turned it up really loud. And I kept thinking shes probably baking something for dinner, like a roast or mashed potatoes or something really great that I could never cook, because you know, my mom never cooked anything except Kraft macaroni and cheese spirals and canned green beans, and right then I hated her for never cooking roasts and mashed potatoes. And then just like that I decided that I wanted to meet her,
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to see what she was like, and I didnt really know exactly what I would say, but I got out of the car and walked across the street. I rang the doorbell, and a woman opened the door, and I thought oh my God, because I dont know what I was imagining, but not this. She was tall and slim and had on these cute white jeans and a blue halter top, and I couldnt see that she was pregnant at all. And she was Mr. DeCarlos wife. She smiled at me because I wasnt talking, and I felt bad because I could just tell she was really nice. She reminded me of my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Crowell, who always had this warm smile on her face, even when I would get into trouble, except Mrs. Crowell short and had gray hair, and Mr. DeCarlos wife had curly black hair, just like his. She said are you alright? And I said are you Mrs. DeCarlo? She said yes, and she still had her hand on the door, and I said, Im one of Mr. DeCarlos students, Im Katie. And she said, oh, Im sorry Katie, but hes not home yet. He should be home any minute. Do you want to come in and wait? And right then a car pulled into the driveway and it was Mr. DeCarlo and we both turned to look at him, and she said, oh, perfect, there he is now. It was the weirdest moment of my life, you know, because there he was, and I didnt know what to say because I am a good girl, and she looked so nice, and I bet when she was my age she was a good girl too, and all of a sudden Mr. DeCarlo looked really small sitting in that car, and I didnt love him right then. He saw me on the porch and sat in his car for the longest time, just looking at us standing there, and Mrs. DeCarlo said, well I wish he would hurry up. And she looked happy to see him and Mr. DeCarlo kept sitting in his car, just sitting there with the engine running, looking at his steering wheel. And when Mrs. DeCarlo said, I cant imagine whats wrong, Im sorry, just a minute, and stepped to go to his car, I grabbed her arm and I said Mrs. DeCarlo. And she said yes. And I said Im sorry. So the next day I came to school with the handgun that my mom keeps in the bathroom drawer, you know, the one that she
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showed both me and Jenn to use just in case of burglars, right. Its the same one that I learned to target shoot with in the backyard, and my sister and I would set up cans on top of an old chair and shoot them, and it was so much fun, but I was always better than Jenn at it. So I kept it in my bag all day and I smiled so that everyone knew I was a good girl. After school I went to Mr. DeCarlos room and said, Mr. DeCarlo. And he said, yes Katie? And I said, I just came to tell you that Im sorry, because I realized youre right, and he leaned back in his chair and smiled, and said good. Then I pulled the gun from my bag and shot him in the chest, just like target shooting in the backyard, and he looked horrible, so limp in his chair, and he was bleeding, so I ran out the door, and I thought so this is what its like to be a bad girl. It made me glad that Im a good girl.
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Conversion Arthur Gottlieb
Conversion
Arthur Gottlieb
Logic turned my tongue into a tickertape, quoting prices instead of poetry. I traded workshirt for pinstripe, ring finger for wrinkles, jingles for the jangle of nervous jewelry. A jungle of keys fit for a serf gaurding his kingdom of feudal castles, every door a locked cell. Spouse & boss sweated on ironed collars & button-downs, clad to keep me chained at my desk. Knotted silk ties at my neck loose substitutes for a hangman's noose, should I stray. Afraid now if I walk on air or water I'll dance at the end of their ropes.
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Duelists Arthur Gottlieb
Duelists
Arthur Gottlieb
Back to back in bed, we hold our breaths, lips half cocked, tongues triggers, count to ten, whirl, eyeballs blazing down long barrels of noses, shoot off our mouths in a noisy exchange of snide & sarcastic remarks. A gun could go off, but neither would hear it, or care if it were loaded with ironies. Bellies full of lead, we drop off to sleep, fitfully dreaming of perfect parting shots, to end all argument.
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Res Ipsa Loquitur Pippa Coulter Abston
Res Ipsa Loquitur

Pippa Coulter Abston
This is for the boy who flings himself a blonde smile, on my exam table and says, meaning it, I like my hair who sighs pleasure like the open road sighs to itself, when we aren't listening This is for the girl who got in trouble with her teacher. Why? I ask her father (she has been so happy). She keeps on humming when she reads says father and when l asked her why she told me books make her happy and she likes to hum This is for the boy who argues fifteen minutes straight at his checkup with his mother, over cell phone minutes. All he cares about mother says is what he can get. Later he gives me his secret fear. Which is that he has put his love for a girl first, before Christ.
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The Pocket Rocket Man Kyle Fargen
The Pocket Rocket Man

Kyle Fargen
fourteen speed vibrator? Stanley looked down at the smooth purple mechanical device sitting promiscuously on the dresser adjacent to a half-used silver tube of KY jelly. Denises parents had only been gone for a few minutes, and already her vibrator was sitting openly on her dresser, thought Stanley. This girl MUST be crazy in the sack, he said to himself with a wide, gaping smile draped across his face. He slowly leaned forward and picked up the 14-speed pocket rocket and shifted it in his hands for a bit. After looking around the deserted room to make sure Denise was still in the bathroom and nobody could see him through the window, he brought the purple object to his nose and breathed in the intoxicating scent of Denise. A giddy sense of joy overcame Stanley; he knew that he would soon taste that same sweetness for himself first-hand. Holding the vibrator in both hands, Stanley stepped around the room, perusing the other secrets to Denises bedroom. Pictures, pictures, and more pictures. A lava lamp stood on the end of the dresser next to an array of pink, blue and purple candles. At the head of her bed, a giant stuffed gorilla glanced angrily down a row of stuffed teddy bears and horses. The desk sitting next to the window was a mess biology homework, an empty test tube apparently used for a chemistry assignment, collegeruled papers and assorted colors of pens, paperclips and markers laid scattered about the wooden frame. Glancing upward to the top of the headboard of the desk, Stanley noticed a small fish tank with a single, solitary goldfish swimming to and fro amidst a skeleton and a deep-sea diver from the 1940s. Nearby sat a Rubics cube and a Magic 8 Ball, both treasures from the mid-tolate 80s. Elton Johns Rocket man emanated softly from a clock radio next to her bed. This entire room is normal for an 18 year-
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old girl, thought Stanley. Well, except for the vibrator, of course. Switching his attention back to the amazing, 10-inch purple piece of fury in his hands, Stanley turned it over and whispered the various speeds, written across the side in bright blue letters, to himself aloud: 1.Ripple 2.Jingle 3.Vibrato 4.Quiver 5.Tremble 6.Pulsate 7.Shake 8.Storm 9.Tempest 10.Hurricane 11.Eruption 12.Armageddon 13.The Apocalypse 14. Stanley paused at the last and final setting because the writing had been scratched off. Look at the wear and tear on that baby. Man, she must really enjoy the 14th setting, thought Stanley jokingly. He smiled another wide, shit-eating grin and walked over to the nearby bathroom where Denise was busily making herself ready for Stanleys lust behind the closed wooden door. He reached down for the door handle to the bathroom but decided against opening the door. As much as he wanted to surprise her and jump on top of her in the bathroom, he didnt want to jeopardize the sure thing he had going for him. Instead, he put his head next to the door, listening to Denise busily making herself irresistible. Are you almost done in there? inquired Stanley softly, attempting to show a balance between patience and anxiety to his soon-to-be lover. Just one more minute, replied Denise through the white
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wooden door. Stanley imagined her standing in front of the mirror, voluptuous and sexy, with her hair pushed back showing off that magnificent neck of hers. It was always the little things that had drawn Stanley to Denise her hands, the way she turned her face slightly to the side when she smiled, the way her neck looked when her hair was pushed back, and those eyes those unforgivingly deep eyes. Once you gazed into those eyes, there was no escape. They swallowed men whole. Ill be waiting, answered Stanley, moving from the door anxiously. He returned to Denises room and took a seat upon her bed, careful not to agitate the already angry gorilla. He knew better than to be pushy with Denise, but he couldnt wait for the ensuing moments. He was not a virgin but his previous female conquests paled in comparison to Denise. She was absolutely remarkable, and she damn well knew it. He had wanted this for over a year, and finally it looked like his wishes were going to be realized. Noticing that he had been sweating from nervousness, he lifted his arms and checked for armpit sweat. Sure enough, two little dark grey spots, one under each arm, stared back at him menacingly. Bringing his hands back down to his lap, he noticed he was still holding the intriguing purple device in his right hand. Knowing full well that Denise would be lost in her own world of hair and makeup for at least another five minutes, Stanley pushed the vibrator knob from the off position to Quiver. The purple mechanism delivered a soft hum while vibrating slightly in his hands. Excitedly, he slid the knob farther to Shake. The hum intensified as each individual rotating gear turned and clicked at 300 revolutions per minute. Stanley struggled to hold the device still his arm muscles tightened yet the machine bobbed and weaved violently in his hands. He giggled as he fought the shaking device. How much horsepower does this thing pack? he said to himself, chuckling at the idea of what speed 14 must be like. Finally getting control of the device by setting it on the bed and leaning onto it with his right arm, he
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quickly switched the knob to the mysterious fourteenth setting. At first, the vibrator did not seem to change speeds at all. It continued humming at the same, steady magnitude as it had at Shake. However, just as soon as Stanley had made this disappointing observation, the gear clicked into place and a deafening thunder was unleashed upon the house. Gears turned on gears and magnetic and electric fields engulfed the innards, swallowing the hardwired metal components toiling strenuously inside the device. Sheer energy came into being where it had never existed in such incredible amounts before. With an explosion of torque, the limited slip differential snapped like the neck of a small child being hit with a wooden baseball bat. In a single instant, Stanley realized that he had made a tremendous mistake. And in that same instant, the power of nearly 3,000 horses had been unleashed upon his 18 year old, 160-lb body. Stanley screamed loudly, only to have it covered by the inexhaustible and overpowering booming of the purple phallus. The pocket rocket had become just that a fuckin rocket. The purple bullet launched forward furiously like a drag racer at the first sight of the green light, taking Stanleys armand the rest of his body-with it. Luckily, the purple missile had been aimed out the window towards the street, or else Stanley would have immediately come face to face with the merciless structure of the bedroom wall. The tip of the vibrator smashed into the window glass, absorbing the majority of the blow and preventing severe bodily harm to Stanley. He jolted forward out the window, still holding the purple rocket, accelerating at nearly 250 feet per second towards the horizon. Scattered shards of glass fell to the lawn beneath the windowsill. Denise, who had been concentrating fully on applying her mascara, heard the brief explosion of a jet engine followed by a tremendous thud. The house shook violently for a second, then silence. A picture swung uneasily on the wall of the bathroom then dropped off the nail, striking the floor. Surprised, she stood
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motionless in front of the mirror for a second or two. Realizing that something terrible had happened, she scurried to the bathroom door and proceeded into her bedroom. All appeared normal, except for the absence of Stanley. Upon further inspection, she noticed the window glass was missing along with her treasured purple love device. At first Denise stood silent. But after the terrible realization of Stanleys accident became clear in her mind, she let out a harrowing scream that shook the walls of the house for a second time. Perhaps somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, or in the open tundra of mother Russia, the anode and cathode of the single D battery stopped producing enough voltage to maintain speed 14. Perhaps over the wide, arid expanse of the Sahara Desert, or over the vast, cold depths of the Atlantic Ocean, Stanley began a tremendous nosedive into the topography lying dauntingly below. Perhaps Stanleys fingers had slid from the device somewhere around Pennsylvania, causing him to quickly become an inseparable part of the eastern deciduous forest. Or perhaps Stanley became acquainted with the absolute zero of the earths outer atmosphere. All of this is speculation, of course, because Stanley was never seen or heard from again. He had been claimed by the purple pocket rocket that had claimed so many others of his generation. The guilt that ensued was terrible. Denise knew that she was to blame for the accidentleaving a vibrator with that kind of potential, right out in the open where anyone could get to it! How stupid can I be? she repeated to herself as she dialed 9-11. The police arrived a few minutes later, and after a statewide search for the young man, the authorities decided to call it quits. He could be anywhere, they insisted. Im sure hell turn up sometime, somewhere, the police captain had told her a day later after the incident. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years. Stanley had not turned up anywhere. Denise could not sleep for weeks. She spent each sleepless
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night plagued with unending guilt and regret. Each time she closed her eyes she saw Stanleys face and imagined the horror he mustve felt for the seconds (or minutes) he experienced before losing his life. She thought about the terrible sorrow Stanleys parents had suffered in the loss of their son. And she thought about what the other kids at school would now think of her. Not only had she ruined Stanleys life as well as his familys, she had ruined her own. Who would want to associate with a killer especially one who killed with a vibrator? One night about a month after the accident, Denise decided to take the initiative to stop feeling guilty and to start reclaiming her life. She had seen the damage that could be done with a device as powerful as a vibrator. She went into the kitchen, retrieved a giant black garbage bag and brought it hastily back to her room. Opening the top drawer of her dresser, she pulled the top layer of socks from the drawer. Then digging in farther, she pulled a blue vibrator from underneath a facade of underwear, followed by a black one, then pink, red, blue, blue, red, green, black, white, white, purple, green, and finally a curved blue vibrator and dumped them all into the garbage bag. She reached in again and pulled several more pocket rockets from the drawer. Realizing she was getting nowhere, she wrestled the drawer from the dresser hinges, raised the drawer above her head, and dumped all of its contents into the bag. Nearly 100 phallic shaped objects as bright and varied as the colors of a rainbow, along with the occasional white sock, filled the bag to its brim. Nearly 100 vibrators, each with dead batteries, damaged machinery, or the highest setting scratched off due to overuse. Tonight, I begin my life anew, Denise said to herself while heaving the 60-lb garbage bag into a dumpster behind her house. Goodbye battery power, hello manpower.
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found (in chuck aukema's class) Stef Carter
found (in chuck aukema's class)

Stef Carter
none of the words are yours.... a whole jargon connected with pure English a whole jargon connected with revenge on biology... mitosis of... underlying metaphor. ...if you can think of trees battling for light ...if you can think of trees describing a love affair territory is covered. it's like a portrait of potential power tools (lathe your next lover!)... underlying metaphor, down to the level of soldering electricity is always a good one. a whole jargon connected with track... territory is covered. all of that stuff is a poem it's like a portrait of something going on none of the words are yours....
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The Patience of a Dog David Thornbrugh
The Patience of a Dog

David Thornbrugh
It takes the man in the motorized wheelchair several minutes to organize his purchase of vegetables and fruit. While he wrestles the plastic bag from counter to lap, the small black and white dog in the wire rack hanging from the wheelchair's back looks up from glittery black eyes, his lower teeth jutting fiercely, but he doesn't bark once.
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Me Cago En La Leche (Robert Jordan in Nicaragua) TC Boyle
Me Cago En La Leche (Robert Jordan in Nicaragua)

TC Boyle
o tell me, comrade, why do you wear your hair this way? Robert Jordan fingered the glistening, rock-hard corona of his spiked hair (dyed mud-brown now, with khaki highlights, for the sake of camouflage) and then loosened the cap of his flask and took a long burning hit of mescal. He waited till the flame was gone from his throat and the familiar glow lit his insides so that they felt radioactive, then leaned over the campfire to address the flat-faced old man in worn fatigues. "Because I shit in the milk of my mother, that's why," he said, the mescal abrading his voice. He caressed the copper stud that lay tight against the flange of his left nostril and wiped his hands with exaggerated care on his Hussong's T-shirt. "And come to think of it," he added, "because I shit in the milk of your mother too." The old man, flat-faced though he was, said nothing. He wasn't that old, actuallytwenty-eight or -nine, Robert Jordan guessedbut poor nutrition, lack of dental care, and too much squinting into the sun gave him the look of a retired caterer in Miami Beach. The fire snapped, monkeys howled. "La reputa que lo pari," the old man said finally, turning his head to spit. Robert Jordan didn't catch it allhe'd dropped out of college in the middle of Intermediate Spanishbut he got the gist of it all right and gave the old man the finger. "Yeah," he said, "and screw you too. Two nights earlier the old man had come to him in the Managua bus station as he gingerly lifted his two aluminumframe superlightweight High Sierra mountain packs down from the overhead rack and exited the bus that had brought him from Mexico City. The packs were stuffed with soiled underwear, gra-
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nola bars, hair gel, and plastic explosives, and Robert Jordan was suffering from a hangover. He was also suffering from stomach cramps, diarrhea, and dehydration, not to mention the general debilitating effects of having spent two days and a night on a third-class bus with a potpourri of drunks, chicken thieves, disgruntled pigs, and several dozen puking, mewling, looseboweled niitos. "Over here, comrade," the old man had whispered, taking him by the arm and leading him to a bench across the square. The old man had hovered over him as Robert Jordan threw himself down on the bench and stretched his legs. Trucks rumbled by, burros brayed, campesinos hurried about their business. "You are the gringo for this of the Cup of Soup, no?" the old man asked. Robert Jordan regarded him steadily out of the slits of his bloodshot eyes. The old man's face was as dry and corrugated as a strip of jerky and he wore the armband of the Frente, black lettersFSLNagainst a red background. Robert Jordan was thinking how good the armband would look with his Dead Kennedys tour jacket, but he'd caught the "Cup of Soup" business and nodded. That nod was all the old man needed. He broke into a grin, bent to kiss him on both cheeks, and breathed rummy fumes in his face. I am called Bayardo," the old man said, "and I am come to take you to the border." Robert Jordan felt bone-weary, but this is what he'd come for, so he stood and shouldered one of the packs while Bayardo took the other. In a few minutes they'd be boarding yet another bus, this one north to Jinotega and the Honduran border that lay beyond it. There Robert Jordan would rendezvous with one of the counter-counter-revolutionary bands (Contra Contra) and he would, if things went well, annihilate in a roar of flying earth clods and shattered trees a Contra airstrip and warehouse where foodstuffsTwinkies, Lipton Cup of Soup, and Rice Krispies among themwere flown in from Texas by the CIA. Hence the codename, "Cup of Soup."
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But nownow they were camped somewhere on the Nicaraguan side of the border, listening to monkeys howl and getting their asses chewed off by mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers, leecbes, and everything else that crawled, swam, or flew. It began to rain. The rain, Robert Jordan understood, would be bad for his hair. He finished a granola bar, exchanged curses with the old man, and crawled into his one-man pup tent. "You take the first watch," he growled through the wall of undulating nylon in his very bad Spanish. "And the second and third too. Come to think of it, why don't you just wake me at noon. The camp was about what you'd expect, Robert Jordan thought, setting his pack down in a clump of poisonous-looking plants. He and the old man had hiked three days through the bug factory to get here, and what was it but a few banana-leaf hovels with cigarette cartons piled outside. Robert Jordan was thinking he'd be happy to blow this dump and get back to the drugs, whores, semi-clean linen, and tequila aejo of Mexico City and points north, when a one-eyed man emerged from the near hut, his face split with a homicidal grin. His name was Ruperto, and he wore the combat boots, baggy camouflage pants, and black Tshirt that even professors in Des Moines favored these days, and he carried a Kalashnikov assault rifle in his right hand. "Qu tal, old man," he said, addressing Bayardo, and then, turning to Robert Jordan and speaking in English: "And this is the gringo with the big boom-boom. Nice hair, gringo." Robert Jordan traded insults with him, ending with the usual malediction about shit, milk, and mothers, and then pinched his voice through his nose in the nagging whine he'd perfected when he was four. "And so where's all the blow that's supposed to be dropping from the trees out here, huh? And what about maybe a hit of rum or some tortillas or something? I mean I been tramping through this craphole for three days and no sooner do I throw my pack down than I get some wiseass com205
ment about my hair I could've stayed in Montana and got from some redneck cowboy. Hey," he shouted, leaning into Ruperto's face and twisting his voice till it broke in a snarl, "screw you too, Jack." Ruperto said nothing. Just smiled his homicidal smile, one eye gleaming, the other dead in a crater of pale, scarred flesh. By now the others had begun to gatherRobert Jordan counted six of them, flat-faced Indians alland a light rain was sizzling through the trees. "You want hospitality," Ruperto said finally, "go to Howard Johnson's." He spat at his feet. "Your mother," he said, and then turned to shout over his shoulder. "Muchacha!" Everyone stopped dead to watch as the girl in skintight fatigues stepped out of the hut, shadowed by an older woman with the build of a linebacker. "S?" the girl said in a voice that inflamed Robert Jordan's groin. Ruperto spat again. "Bring the gringo some chow." "The Cup of Soup?" the girl asked. Ruperto winked his mad wet eye at Robert Jordan. "S," he grunted, "the Cup of Soup." As he lay in his pup tent that night, his limbs entwined in the girl's-her name was either Vidaluz or Concepcin, he couldn't remember whichRobert Jordan thought of his grandmother. She was probably the only person in the world he didn't hate. His mother was a real zero, white wine and pasta salad all the way, and his friends back in Missoula were a bunch of dinks who thought Bryan Adams was god. His father was dead. When the old man had sucked on the barrel of his 30.06 Winchester, Robert was fourteen and angry. His role model was Sid Vicious and he was into glue and Bali Hai. It was his grandmothershe was Andalusian, really cool, a guerrilla who'd bailed out of Spain in the '30s, pregnant with Robert Jordan IIwho listened patiently to his gripes about the school jocks and his wimpy teachers and bought him tire chains to wrap around his boots.
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They sat for hours together listening to the Clash's Sandinista album, and when he blew off the tips of his pinky and ring fingers with a homemade bomb, it was she who gave him his first pair of studded black leather gloves. And what was best about herwhat he liked more than anything elsewas that she didn't take any shit from anybody. Once, when her third husband, Joe Thunderbucket, called her "Little Rabbit," she broke his arm in three places. It was she more than anyone who'd got him into all this revolution businessshe and the Clash, anyway. And of course he'd always loved dynamite. He lay there, slapping mosquitoes, his flesh sticky against the girl's, wondering what his grandmother was doing now, in the dark of this night before his first offensive. It was a Tuesday, wasn't it? That was bingo night on the reservation, and she usually went with Joe's sister Leona to punch numbers and drink boilermakers at the bingo hall. He pictured her in her black mantilla, her eyes cold and hard and lit maybe a little with the bourbon and Coors, and then he woke up Concepcin or Vidaluz and gave it to her again, all his anger focused in the sharp tingling stab and rhythm of it. It was still dark when the old man woke him. "Son of a bitch," Robert Jordan muttered. His hair was crushed like a Christmas-tree ornament and there was a sour metallic taste in his mouth. He didn't mind fighting for the revolution, but this was ridiculousit wasn't even light yet. "Andale," the old man said, "the Cup of Soup awaits." "Are you out of your gourd, or what?" Robert Jordan twisted free of the girl and checked his watch. "It's four-fifteen, for christ's sake." The old man shrugged. "Qu puta es la guerra," he said. "War's a bitch." And then the smell of woodsmoke and frijoles came to him over Ruperto's high crazed whinny of a laugh, the girl was up and
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out of his sleeping bag, strolling heavy-haunched and naked across the clearing, and Robert Jordan was reaching for his hair gel. After breakfasttwo granola bars and a tin plate of frijoles that looked and tasted like humusRobert Jordan vomited in the weeds. He was going into battle for the first time and he didn't have the stomach for it. This wasn't like blowing the neighbors' garbage cans at 2:00 A.M. or ganging up on some jerk in a frat jacket, this was the real thing. And what made it worse was that they couldn't just slip up in the dark, attach the plastique with a timer, and let it rip when they were miles awayoh, no, that would be too simple. His instructions, carried by the old man from none other than Ruy Ruiz, the twenty-three-year-old Sandinista poet in charge of counter-counter-revolutionary activities and occasional sestinas, were to blow it by hand the moment the cargo plane landed. Over breakfast, Robert Jordan, angry though he was, had begun to understand that there was more at risk here than his coiffure. There could be shooting. Rocket fire. Grenades. A parade of images from all the schlock horror films he'd ever seenexploding guts, melting faces, ragged ghouls risen from the gravemarched witheringly through his head and he vomited. "Hey, gringo," Ruperto called in English, "suck up your cojones and let's hit it." Robert Jordan cursed him weakly with a barrage of shits and milks, but when he turned round to wipe the drool from his face he saw that Ruperto and his big woman had led a cluster of horses from the jungle. The big woman, her bare arms muscled like a weiglitlifter's, approached him leading a gelding the size of a buffalo. "Here, gringo," she breathed in her incongruously feminine voice, "mount up." "Mount?" Robert Jordan squeaked in growing panic. "I thought we were walking." The truth was, Robert Jordan had always hated horses.
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Growing up in Montana it was nothing but horses, horses, horses, morning, noon, and night. Robert Jordan was a rebel, a punk, a free spirithe was no cowboy dildoand for him it was dirt bikes and dune buggies. He'd been on horseback exactly twice in his life and both times he'd been thrown. Horses: they scared him. Anything with an eye that big "Vmonos," Ruperto snapped. "Or are you as gutless as the rest of the gringo wimps they send us?" "Leche," Robert Jordan whinnied, too shaken even to curse properly. And then he was in the saddle, the big, broad-beamed monster of a horse peering back at him out of the flat wicked discs of its eyes, and they were off. Hunkered down in the bug factory, weeds in his face, his coccyx on fire, and every muscle, ligament, and tendon in his legs and ass beaten to pulp by the hammer of the horse's backbone, Robert Jordan waited for the cargo plane. He was cursing his grandmother, the Sandinistas, the Clash, and even Sid Vicious. This was, without doubt, the stupidest thing he'd ever done. Still, as he crouched there with the hard black plastic box of the detonator in his hand, watching the pot-bellied crewcut rednecks and their runty flat-faced Indian allies out on the landing strip, he felt a surge of savage joy: he was going to blow the motherfuckers to Mars and back. Ruperto was somewhere to his left, dug in with the big woman and their Kalashnikovs. Their own flat-faced Indians, led by the flat-faced old man, were down to the right somewhere, bristling with rifles. The charges were in placethree in the high grass along the runway median and half a dozen under the prefab aluminum warehouse itself. The charges had been set by a scampering Ruperto just before dawn while the lone sentry dreamed of cold cerveza and a plate of fried dorado and banana chips. Ruperto had set them because when the time came Robert Jordan's legs hadn't worked and that was bad. Ruperto had called
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him a cheesebag, a faggot, and worse, and he'd lost face with the flat-faced Indians and the old man. But that was then, this was now. Suddenly he heard it, the distant drone of propellers like the hum of a giant insect. He caressed the black plastic box, murmuring "Come on, baby, come on," all the slights and sneers he'd ever suffered, all the head slaps and jibes about his hair, his gloves, and his boots, all the crap he'd taken from his yuppie bitch of a mother and those dickheads at schoolall of it had come down to this. If the guys could only see him now, if they could only see the all-out, hellbent, super-destructive, radical mess he was about to make . . . Yes! And there it was, just over the treetops. Coming in low like a pregnant goose, stuffed full of Twinkies. He began counting down: ten, nine, eight . The blast was the most beautiful thing he'd ever witnessed. One minute he was watching the plane touch down, its wings and fuselage unmarked but for the painted-over insignia of the Flying Tigers, the world still and serene, the sack-bellies standing back expectantly, already tasting that first long cool Bud, and then suddenly, as if he'd clapped another slide in the projector, everything disappeared in a glorious killing thunderclap of fire and smoke. Hot metal, bits of molten glass and god knew how many Twinkies, Buds, and Cups of Soup went rocketing into the air, scorching the trees, and streaming down around Robert Jordan like a furious hissing rain. When the smoke cleared there was nothing left but twisted aluminum, the burned-out hulk of the plane, and a crater the size of Rockefeller Center. From the corner of his eye Robert Jordan could see Ruperto and the big woman emerge cautiously from the bushes, weapons lowered. In a quick low crouch they scurried across the open ground and stood for a moment peering into the smoking crater, then Ruperto let out a single shout of triumph"Yee-haw!"and fired off a round in the air. It was then that things got hairy. Someone opened up on
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them from the far side of the field-some Contra Contra Contra, no doubt-and Ruperto went down. The flat-faced Indians let loose with all they had and for a minute the air screamed like a thousand babies torn open. The big woman threw Ruperto over her shoulder and flew for the jungle like a wounded crab. "Andale!" she shouted and then the firing stopped abruptly as everyone, Robert Jordan included, bolted for the horses. When he saw the fist-sized chunk torn out of Ruperto's calf, Robert Jordan wanted to vomit. So he did. The horses were half crazy from the blast and the rat-tat-tat of the Kalashnikovs and they stamped and snorted like fiends from hell. God, he hated horses. But he was puking, Ruperto's wound like raw meat flecked with dirt and bone, and the others were leaping atop their mounts, faces pulled tight with panic. Now there was firing behind them again and he straightened up and looked for his horse. There he was, Diablo, jerking wildly at his tether and kicking out his hoofs like a doped-up bronc at the rodeo. Shit. Robert Jordan wiped his lips and made a grab for the reins. It was a mistake. He might just as well have stabbed the horse with a hot pokerin that instant Diablo reared, snapped his tether, and brought all of his wet steaming nine hundred and fifty-eight pounds squarely down on Robert Jordan's left foot. The sound of his toes snapping was unmusical and harsh and the pain that accompanied it so completely demanding of his attention that he barely noticed the retreating flanks of Diablo as he lashed off through the undergrowth. Robert Jordan let out a howl and broke into a string of inspired curses in two languages and then sat heavily, cradling his foot. The time he'd passed out having his nose pierced flashed through his mind and then the tears started up in his eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought. And then he remembered where he was and who was shooting at him from across the field and he looked up to see his comrades already mountedRuperto includedand giving him a quick sad look. "Too bad, gringo," Ruperto said, grinning crazily
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despite the wound, "but it looks like we're short a horse." "My toes, my toes!" Robert Jordan cried, trying to stand and falling back again. Rat-tat. Rat-tat-tat, sang the rifles behind them. Ruperto and his big woman spoke to their horses and they were gone. So too the flat-faced Indians. Only the old man lingered a moment. Just before he lashed his horse and disappeared, he leaned down in the saddle and gave Robert Jordan a wistful look. "Leche," he said, abbreviating the curse, "but isn't war a bitch."
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Beggars Noel Conneely
Beggars
Noel Conneely
In briny pools old sailors dredge for cockles; mud clouds their prayer. They draw circles in the sand; make signs with crooked fingers. A cemetary of lost words falters on dry tongues; ear after ear drops into their begging bowl.
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Galway Sligo Bus Noel Conneely
Galway Sligo Bus

Noel Conneely
Now as September darkens familiar roads unleash old memories, I thought were filed away. Towns and villages are tears on the landscape's face. My ribcage is too small. My shrunken heart rebels against the tyranny of needing. Clouds mute the moon. Its scant light the mere suggestion of folly. Destinations overtake the desire to journey unending. Before I know it, I'm unpacking intimate items of clothing, in strange surroundings.
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Manolo Nick Barnes
Manolo
Nick Barnes
eside him, standing on the supports of the fence, was the boy, his arms crossed like Gustavetes on top of the barrera and his chin nestled in his small arms. Sweat ran down the boys face and he would raise his sleeve periodically to wipe the beads from his brow. Gustavete wore no hat. His thinning hair left his head bare to the sun but he had moved to the shaded half of the plaza and although it was hot Gustavete was not uncomfortable. He looked dully out across the ring. Manolos eyes searched the movements of the bull and the man. Listening to the groans of the crowd, he lifted his head from his arms. His focus never strayed from the figures on the sand. The boy watched Juanito struggling in the middle of the ring. He made the best of it and did his work in the shade as much as he could but Juanito was having an especially hard time of it. The bull eyed him from a distance. Juanito was too far away for him to be sure so he waited, breathing heavily, tired, bleeding and enraged. Juanito held the cape out in front, shaking the cloth and pulling at the folds. He would have to get much closer. At twenty feet, Juanito lifted his head high and straightened his back and began moving in small measured steps toward the bull. In his hand, he held the cape baton and the wooden espada, the two crossing in his palm, fingers wrapping around them in a strong grip, the sword reaching out into the cloth of the cape as a mast holding up a sail. The red cloth hung loosely ready for the current to catch in its folds and flow through the still air. Juanito stepped closer to the bull extending his arm away from his body. The bulls eyes did not waver from the cape. Juanito inched
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Manolo Nick Barnes
forward, eyes on the horns, and still the bull waited. Toro! Juanito shouted and shook the cape. The bull, staring at the cape, wanted to be sure. The cape shook again. Toro! Nothing. The sounds of several pitos pierced through the crowd. Others, who did not have whistles made the noise naturally but they were not as loud or effective. Juanito took a deep breath. Painfully slow and precise, Juanito shuffled his way toward the bull. Toro, toro, toro! This time, the charge came full and Juanito led the bull through slowly but at a distance. Juanito turned, shifting his feet and leaning out for another pass and the charge returned, the bull searching for the man beneath the muleta and then slowing, tossing his head, lifting the ends of the cape, which fluttered momentarily. The red waves subsided as the bull staggered through with nothing to show for his effort and blood and foam hanging from his mouth, dripped onto the sand, producing a small pool near his feet as he became still. He stared into the shade of the ring. The bull did not turn back to Juanito but faced the crowd, gazing toward Gustavete and the boy, his ass to the matador. The crowd groaned and a cushion was tossed onto the sand on the far side of the ring. Juanito saw it, pretended to ignore it and clenched his jaw. A bad bull for a bad matador, Gustavete said. Do you think? the boy questioned, lifting his head from his arms and looking up at the old man. Have you been asleep? Can you not see this? Maybe you should go home to your mother if you cannot understand this, he said pointing out into the middle of the arena, but looking at the boy.
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Manolo Nick Barnes
I believe that this is the worst I have seen. They are booing before he has tried to kill. Killing is always the worst for him, the boy said. We should not have expected more. Maybe they should cut him open and sell his meat after? It would be a better use of him though it is likely he would have no good taste. The bull is no good though, the boy offered. Yes, but he would make shit of it anyway. Do you think? Have you not seen? Like I said, you should go home. You have no taste for this if you cannot see that. Gustavete smiled and looked to the boy as he faced out at the man with the bull. The boy didnt seem to notice Gustavetes smile and adjusted his shirt when he shifted on the fence. Looking closer at the boys chest, he could see a hint of red under the shirt and a bulge lower in the boys stomach. He knew immediately. Swelling with affection and pride he knew what the boy had in mind. Gustavete tapped the wooden barrera three times with his finger so the boy would not see. Yes, I think I might leave. This is too bad to watch, he said as he stepped back from the barrera. He could hear the boys shoes scrape the sand below as he lifted himself onto the fence, rolled over the top and dropped onto the sand, falling on his knees. The boy rose and tore off across the ring to the bull while ripping the small cape from beneath his shirt. His shirt was open part way down revealing his chest and it whipped in the air as he ran. Staring into his back, Gustavete moved to the fence, thought nothing, just watched and waited, fastening his grip onto the side of the barrera. The crowd rose and shouts echoed into the ring as the boy raced his way to the bull, which now stood full in the sun. Appearing from the shadows, those who had not noticed Manolo before now did and squealed and squeaked, some delighted others looking down to their feet or up into the
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sun. But they all, mumbling to themselves, rose to their feet. Juanito saw the boy coming but there was nothing he could do and the others could not get to him in time. Toro! The boys voice was small but all listened and heard. The bull lifted his head slowly, startled but too tired to hurry. He carefully watched the approaching boy. Manolo wasted no time as the men with capes climbed from behind the barrera and came running towards him. It would have to be fast or not at all. The bull did not watch the other men approach and surround him or the shouts they offered for his attention. Juanito stood behind, seeing the bulls rear and his testicles hanging between his legs. He clenched and unclenched his jaw. He shouted at the boy, Fuera! Dejalo! Hijo de puta! Juanito waved at the boy, motioning him to leave the ring but Manolo was not watching. They each moved toward the bull, Juanito much more quickly. Standing directly behind and still shouting, Juanito pulled his sword from beneath the muleta, raised it high and slapped the ass of the bull with the broad side. The slap incited the charge. The bulls body shook as the weight fell to the hind legs and then began to move forward. Manolo, unready and surprised, stumbled and sprawled on all fours then scrambled to his feet without the cape and wheeled back trying to avoid the charge. But the bull was on him and they came together awkwardly. Manolo lay across the face of the bull, between the horns not fighting it, not making a sound. The bull then swung his head down and to the side as if to lay the boy softly upon the sand but Manolo held tightly to the horn where it entered his groin and would not be laid gently down. Then the bull rose off his feet, testicles swinging, and tossed his head, sending the boy into the sun. The pain shot through Gustavetes feet and climbed his legs reaching for his groin and then moved up through his gut
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and into his chest where it stayed as he watched the boy slung over the massive head and then tossed. Manolo landed on his stomach, just inside the line of the shadow, lying uncomfortably with his arm behind him and twisted. The bull had lost him after the toss or else he would have been on him, butting him with his head and searching for him with his horns. Manolos right shoulder was buried in the dirt, his chin to his chest. He could have been crying and no one would have known. He lay still. Juanito led the bull officiously back into the sunlight. Gustavete ran around the ring, behind the barrera, knowing where the boy would be taken as the colorful group stood over him. One of the ayudantes gathered the boy in his arms and rushed him to the wall. Lifted high and clear, Manolos unbroken arm hung limp and swung off to his side before Gustavete snatched him, gathering the loose arm in his grasp and hurrying towards the infirmary. Ducking his way into the darkness of the corridor, Gustavete passed the dogs sitting in the shade, mouths open, tongues hanging out, ears up, excited by the shouts and the bustle. He swung into the infirmary, being careful as he stepped through the door sideways. The doctor looked from the boy to Gustavete and motioned to the table with a nod of his head. He placed the boy on the table. His eyes searched the boy for that familiar stain but refused to move down to the groin. Manolos pants were bright red, alive and moving. The doctor ordered the nurse to hurry her preparations and he grabbed the scissors to begin cutting off the pants. The nurse was a plump unattractive woman but she worked quickly and her short plump fingers knew their way around the utensils from practice. She prepared them for the doctor. With the scissors, he moved slowly up toward the groin. And then ripped the rest of the pants free from the boy as he finished cutting around the
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wound, throwing the stained pants to the floor. Gustavete did not turn away when he saw the blood moving out onto the table. He had a sudden impulse to hold his hand over it to stop the flow as the doctor inspected the wound. Noticing his agitation, he asked the nurse with a nod of his head to lead Gustavete from the room. She came and stood in front of him, between him and the boy, motioning him back with her gloved hands. She smelled of the aloe in her hair and her gloves were still white. They entered the hallway and she looked him in the face before she turned to go. The artificial light of the room shone behind her. Gustavete could not look at her because the light was too bright so he looked to the floor instead. It is up to the doctor now. The doctor and God. I would rather have it be just the doctor, Gustavete said. Appearing in the dark hallway, the doctor moved blindly down the corridor to find Gustavete standing next to a chair. The doctor approached him and said nothing for a moment and then the crowd booed and jeered Juanito in the ring. Gustavete knew that the bull would not die, that Juanito could not finish him. He could hear the moans after each time with the puntaso. This was not a good bull. The doctor shook his head. It was no good. The bleeding has stopped but I cannot repair it anymore. It was smashed too badly. Im sorry. He is conscious now, though. I have given him the morphine and he feels nothing but he can talk for a little while. I asked if he wanted to talk to you and he said no. There is not much time. We have called his mother and she is on her way but she will not make it. You should go quickly. Manolo lay on his back just the way he had left him, his head turned from him and a large white sheet covering him up to his armpits. He could hear the boy sniffle quietly. Gustavete circled the table. He came around to face the boy but he would not
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meet his gaze. It was apparent he had been crying. He was still sweating. Manolo turned his head to the other side. The whiteness in the infirmary was blinding. Your mother is coming. She will be happy to see you. Tell her I am sorry. Manolo sniffled. Sorry for what? For dying and being a coward. You are no coward. Dont say that. You are lying. I was scared and you knew it. Everyone saw it. You are the bravest boy I have ever known. I could not have done what you did. Really? Really. And you will be great with more practice. Someday, you will be a great matador. The bull was finally dead and the crowd booed Juanito. You do not need to lie to me. I know how it is. I am not scared. Honest, Im not. You are always talking to him so I will be okay. I know what they mean now about the fear. It is everything out there. For me, it was that way. But you did not tell me there would be so many men with capes. Gustavete smiled and the boy turned back to him. Do you know I tried to test and see how brave I could be? No. I tried burning cigarettes on my arm to try and not to get scared of the burn. Look. The boy shifted beneath the white sheet, trying to lift his broken arm. He did not know it was broken. Gustavete reached out and touched the sheet, feeling his arm beneath it. I believe you, he said. I know now it was silly of me. They are very different. The crowd cheered as a new bull tore his way into the ring. Que bonito! or Que Guapa! the women cheered.
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Gustavete stayed until his mother came and she cried and she swore at him. He left them and walked home down the paseo along the river, with the current. He did not want to watch the rest of it.
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The Crocus Dale Haake
The Crocus
Dale Haake
A chimney breathes its hazy prayer Skyward in the winter's gloom; Stolid bricks, the farm wife's lair, Chilly fingers pluck the loom. Fence logs hug still buried meadows Spring, just a hope, some months away; A crocus dares the silent snows, Her husband enters, not much to say.
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Contributor Notes
Contributor Notes
Pippa Coulter Abston is a practicing pediatrician and poet. She lives with her husband and two children in Huntsville, Alabama. In writing about her encounters with patients and about medicine itself, she hopes to bring a richer, more soulful context to the patient-physician interaction. Michael Amundson is a student at Coe College. Carl Auerbach is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Yeshiva University, specializing in the psychology of trauma. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he has a private practice of psychotherapy. John Azrak is the chairperson of a secondary school English department in New York. He has poems in Aethlon, Buffalo Bones, Alkali Flats, CQ, The Comstock Review and Lynx Eyes. Nick Barnes is a senior at Coe College and wishes certain people would stop crying on his shoulder. K. Kvashay-Boyles work appears in The Best American Non-Required Reading, 2004, McSweeneys, Best of McSweeneys, and Politically Inspired Fiction. She is a student at the Iowa Writers Workshop T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of sixteen books of fiction, including, most recently, After the Plague (2001), Drop City (2003) and The Inner Circle (2004). He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, Granta and McSweeney's, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards. He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children. Alan Britt is an English Instructor at Towson University and is a Poet-in-Residence for Maryland State Arts Council. His work 224
Contributor Notes has been published around the world, including Mexico, Hungary, Japan, Ecuador and Peru. Stef Carter lives and writes in a box outside of the Cedar Rapids Public Library. Noel Conneely is from Dublin, Ireland. Corey Davis is a junior at Coe College and wishes to someday to write a novel in sestina form. Her six words will be: gun, incandescent, erudite, chalkboard, sizzle, and gooseberry. Sharon Doyle put aside writing in order to raise five children and teach at two colleges. She recently retired and has begun writing again, hopefully putting to good use the experience of her life. Kyle M. Fargen is a Coe College senior originally from the barren tundra of Wisconsin. He was awarded the 2002 Hunter S. Thompson Prize for his 2001 publishing of "When I Wake Up, My Mouth Tastes Like Yesterday's Dinner." Although he cannot yet grow facial hair above his chin, he someday hopes to cultivate an all-natural, Geraldo-Rivera moustache of his own so that he may offer free moustache rides to those in need. Aliza Fones might graduate in May, and thinks that if wishes were horses, then she wouldn't have to ride your mom. Arthur Gottlieb is from Tigard, Oregon. Dale Haake is a lawyer from Rock Island, Illinois and has won several prizes for his poetry and short fiction. He also fluently speaks three languages. William Joliff grew up on a farm just north of Magnetic Springs, Ohio. He is currently chair of the Department of Writing and Literature at George Fox University. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Southern Humanities Review, Northwest Review, West Branch, Passages North, and Appalachian Journal. Mitchell Metz is a former All-Ivy football player from Brown University who is now a stay-at-home dad and accomplished dilet-
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Contributor Notes tante. He serves as the poetry editor for Eclectica, an on-line publication. Joe Mills tells everyone that he is in a rock band from California and is a closet escatologist. Nathan Nass is tall with straw hair and he is going to Korea next year where he will be studying at an all women's university. Liz Nicklos likes to wear very sensible black shoes and swears upon her Irish Catholic rosary that her provocative story is in no way autobiographical and she plans to enter the convent of St. Agatha the Innocent after graduating from Coe. Alice Obrecht writes theses in her spare time and flips anyone the bird when they patronize her. ZZ Packer's stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harpers, Story and the Best American Short Stories. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. A graduate of Yale, the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and the Writing Seminar at Johns Hopkins University. Her story, Geese, reprinted here, is from her first collection of short stories, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Donna Pucciani has a Ph.D. in Humanities from New York University and has been published in journals in the United States and Britain. She currently serves as Vice-President of the Poets' Club of Chicago. Emily Renaud is a junior at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and has some serious attitude. Judi A. Rypma teaches in the English Department at Western Michigan University and her poems have appeared most recently in Controntation, Potomac Review, International Poetry Review, Flyway, Sanskrit, Ellipsis, and Birmingham Poetry Review. Glenn Sheldon lives in Toledo, Ohio, where he is an Assistant Professor in the department of Interdisciplinary and Special Programs at the University of Toledo. He is currently compiling his first full-length manuscript.
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Contributor Notes S.K. Sedlacek hopes to someday have David Crosby's child. Becky Stockel is a third-year English and Writing major at Coe College. Although she's been writing for years, this is her first published story. Jenn Streck is a junior English and Writing major from Kiron, Iowa. Virginia Chase Sutton is from Tempe, Arizona and her first book of poems, Embellishments, was published in February 2003. Her poems have appeared in Paris Review, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Boulevard, Quarterly West, Western Humanities Review and many other publications. Widely anthologized, she has won first prize for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, has been the Louis Untermeyer Scholar at Bread Loaf, and is currently working on a memoir called Hungry. David Thornbrugh is a Ring of Fire resident currently rooted in Seattle with his eyes on Central Europe. Recent publications include Rattle, Runes, Terminus.
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Coe Review

Coe Review 2004 masthead

Virginia Chase Sutton

Pippa Coulter Abston

cover digital graphic by Erin Cahill

Summer Night Alan Britt

Summer Night Alan Britt

Spanish Wine in Early Summer Alan Britt

Spanish Wine in Early Summer

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

No. It did not.

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ruses defending their turf.

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King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

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King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

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King Kong K. Kvashay-Boyle

Midwest Weather Glenn Sheldon

blue on blue John Azrak

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

The Banks of the Sava Joe Mills

curse of the cretaceous joe mills

curse of the cretaceous

an elegy joe mills

The Miracle of My Fathers Cock Virginia Chase Sutton